



Class 

Book 


BEQUEST OF 

ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 


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Gilliatt had but one resource, his knife 




Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for esicbange) 


FIRST PART.— SIEUR CLUBIN. 




^ Book I. — ^The History of a Bad Reputation. 

1. A Word written on a White Page ... 9 

II. The Bu de la Rue ii 

TIL For your Wife : when you Marry . . *17 

IV. An Unpopular Man 21 

V. More Suspicious Facts about Gilliatt . . 32 

VI. The Dutch Sloop 36 

VII. A fit Tenant for a Haunted House . . 42 

VTII. The Gild-Holm-’Ur Seat 46 

Book II, — Mess Lethierry. 

I. A Troubled Life, but a Quiet Conscience . . 50 

II. A certain Predilection 52 

III. Mess Lethierry’s Vulnerable Part . . .56 

Book III. — Durande and D^ruchette. 

& I. Prattle and Smoke 58 

II. The Old Story of Utopia . . . .62 

III. Rantaine 64 


ii 


CONTENTS. 


IV. Continuation of the Story of Utopia . .691 

V. The “ Devil Boat ” yU 

VI. Lethierry’s Exaltation 75f 

VII. The same Godfather and the same Patron 

Saint 77j 

VIII. ‘‘ Bonnie Dundee ” 8o| ’ 

IX. The Man who discovered Rantaine’s Character 84lj 

X. Long Yarns 86 j 

XI. Matrimonial Prospects 89j 

XII. An Anomaly in the Character of Lethierry . 9i| 

XI 1 1 . Thoughtlessness adds a Grace to Beauty . 96) 

Book IV. — The Bagpipe. 

I. Streaks of Fire in the Horizon . . . 9^ 

II. The Unknown unfolds itself by Degrees . . loi 

III. The Air “ Bonnie Dundee ” finds an Echo on 

the Hill 104 . 

IV. “ A serenade by night may please a lady fair. 

But of uncle and of guardian let the trouba- 
dour beware.” — Unpublished Comedy . 105 

V. A deserved Success has always its Detractors . 108 

VI. The sloop Cashmere saves a Shipwrecked Crew 169 

VH. How an Idler had the Good Fortune to be seen 


by a Fisherman . . . . .112 

Book V. — The Revolver. 

I. Conversations at the Jean Auberge . . 116 

II. Clubin observes some one .... 124 

III. Clubin carries away something and brings 

back nothing 127 

IV. Pleinmont 130 

V. The Birds’-nesters 137 


CONTENTS. 


ill 

VI. The Jacressade 148 

VII. Nocturnal Buyers and Mysterious Sellers . 156 

VIII. A “ Cannon ” off the Red Ball and the Black 159 

IX. Useful Information for Persons who expect or 
fear the Arrival of Letters from beyond 
Sea ........ 170 


Book VI. — ^The Drunken Steersman and 
THE Sober Captain. 

I. The Douvres 175 

II. An unexpected Flask of Brandy . . , 178 

III. Conversations interrupted .... 182 

IV. Captain Clubin displays all his great Qualities 190 

V. Clubin reaches the Crowning-point of Glory . 196 

VI. The Interior of an Abyss suddenly revealed . 201 

VII. An unexpected Denouement .... 210 

Book VII. — ^The Danger of Opening a Book 
AT Random. 

I. The Pearl at the Foot of a Precipice . . 215 

II. Much Astonishment on the Western Coast . 224 

III. A Quotation from the Bible .... 229 


SECOND PART. 


Book I. — Malicious Gilliatt. 

I. The Place which is easy to reach, but difficult 

to leave again 241 

II. A Catalogue of Disasters .... 247 

III. Sound, but not Safe 250 


IV 


CONTENTS. 


I 


IV. A Preliminary Survey 252 ^ 

V. A Word upon the Secret Co-operations of the J 

Elements ^55 

VI. A Stable for the Horse ..... 259 

VII. A Chamber for the Voyager .... 262 ■;] 

VIII. Importunaeque volucres 271 j 

IX. The Rock, and how Gilliatt used it . . 274 ^ ,1 

X. The Forge 278 i 

XI. Discovery 283 j 

XII. The Interior of an Edifice under the Sea . 287 \ 

XIII. What was seen there, and what perceived dimly 289 1 


Book II. — ^The Labour. 

I. The Resources of one who has nothing . 

II. Preparations 

III. Gilliatt’s Masterpiece comes to the Rescue of 

Lethierry 

IV. Sub Re 

V. Sub Umbra 

VI. Gilliatt places the Sloop in readiness 

VII. Sudden Danger 

VIII Movement rather than Progress 
IX. A Slip between Cup and Lip .... 

X. Sea-wamings ....... 

XI. Murmurs in the Air 


1 

.'1 


295 j 

298 j 

I 


300 

304 

310 

312 

315 


318 

322 

324 


328 


Book III. — The Struggle. 

I. Extremes meet 

II. The Ocean Winds .... 

III. The Noises explained . 

IV. Turba Turma 

V. Gilliatt’s Alternatives 

VI. The Combat 


• 332 *• 

• 334 

• 337 ^ 

• 341 < 

• 343 : 

• 344 J 


CONTENTS. 


V 


Book IV. — Pitfalls in the Way. 

I. He who is Hungry is not alone . . . 367 

II. The Monster 372 

III. Another kind of Sea-combat .... 381 

IV. Nothing is hidden, nothing lost . . . 384 

V. The fatal Difference between Six Inches and 

Two Feet 388 

VI. De Profundis ad Altum 392 

VII. The Appeal is heard 399 


THIRD PART. 


Book I. — Night and the Moon. 

I. The Harbour Clock 405 

II. The Harbour Bell again 421 

Book II. — Gratitude and Despotism. 

I. Joy surrounded by Tortures .... 431 

II. The Leathern Trunk 441 

Book III. — ^The Departure of the “Cashmere.” 

I. The Havelet near the Church .... 444 

II. Despair confronts Despair .... 447 

III. The Forethought of Self-sacrifice . . . 455 

IV. “ For your Wife when you Marry ” . . . 460 

V. The Great Tomb 464 



FIRST PART. 


SIEUR CLUBIN. 






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THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


BOOK L— THE HISTORY OF A 
BAD REPUTATION. 


I. 


A WORD WRITTEN ON A WHITE PAGE. 


HRISTMAS DAY in the year 182- was somewhat 



remarkable in the island of Guernsey. Snow fell 
on that day. In the Channel Islands a frosty winter 
is uncommon, and a fall of snow is an event. 

On that Christmas morning the road which skirts the 
seashore from St. Peter’s Port to the Vale was clothed 
in white. From midnight till the break of day the snow 
had been falling. Towards nine o'clock, a little after 
the rising of the wintry sun, as it was too early yet for 
the Church of England folks to go to St. Sampson’s, 
or for the Wesley ans to repair to Eldad Chapel, the 
road was almost deserted. Throughout that portion of 
the highway which separates the first from the second 
tower only three foot-passengers could be seen. These 
were a child, a man, and a woman. Walking at a 
distance from each other, these wayfarers had no visible 
connection. The child, a boy of about eight years old. 


. 10 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


had stopped, and was looking curiously at the wintry 
scene. The man walked behind the woman at a dis- 
tance of about a hundred paces. Like her, he was 
coming from the direction of the church of St. Sampson. 
The appearance of the man, who was still young, was 
something between that of a workman and a sailor. 
He wore his working-day clothes — a kind of Guernsey 
shirt of coarse brown stuff, and trousers partly concealed 
by tarpaulin leggings — a costume which seemed to indi- 
cate that, notwithstanding the holy day, he was going 
to no place of worship. His heavy shoes of rough leather, 
with their soles covered with large nails, left upon the 
snow as he walked a print more like that of a prison 
lock than the foot of a man. The woman, on the con- 
trary, was evidently dressed for church. She wore a 
large mantle of black silk, wadded, under which she had 
coquettishly adjusted a dress of Irish poplin, trimmed 
alternately with white and pink ; but for her red stock- 
ings, she might have been taken for a Parisian. She 
walked on with a light and free step, so little suggestive 
of the burden of life that it might easily be seen that 
she was young. Her movements possessed that subtle 
grace which indicates the most delicate of all transitions 
— that soft intermingling, as it were, of two twilights — 
the passage from the condition of a child to that of 
womanhood. The man seemed to take no heed of her. 

Suddenly, near a group of oaks at the corner of a 
field, and at the spot called the Basses Maisons, she 
turned, and the movement seemed to attract the atten- 
tion of the man. She stopped, seemed to reflect a 
moment, then stooped, and the man fancied that he 
could discern that she was tracing with her finger some 
letters in the snow. Then she rose again, went on her 
way at a quicker pace, turned once more, this time 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


II 


smiling, and disappeared to the left of the roadway by 
the footpath under the hedges which leads to the Ivy 
Castle. When she had turned for the second time the 
man had recognized her as D4ruchette, a charming girl 
of that neighbourhood. 

The man felt no need of quickening his pace, and 
some minutes later he found himself near the group of 
oaks. Already he had ceased to think of the vanished 
D^ruchette ; and if at that moment a porpoise had 
appeared above the water, or a robin had caught his 
eye in the hedges, it is probable that he would have 
passed on his way. But it happened that his eyes were 
fixed upon the ground ; his gaze fell mechanically upon 
the spot where the girl had stopped. Two little foot- 
prints were there plainly visible ; and beside them he 
read this word, evidently written by her in the snow, — 

GILLIATT.’^ 

It was his own name. 

He lingered for a while motionless, looking at the 
letters, the little footprints, and the snow ; and then 
walked on, evidently in a thoughtful mood. 


II. 

THE Bfi DE’ LA RUE. 

Gilliatt lived in the parish of St. Sampson. He was 
not liked by his neighbours ; and there were reasons for 
that fact. 

To begin with, he lived in a queer kind of “ haunted ” 
dwelling. In the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, some- 
times in the country, but often in streets with many 
inhabitants, you will come upon a house the entrance 


12 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


to which is completely barricaded. Holly bushes obstruct 
the doorway, hideous boards, with nails, conceal the 
windows below ; while the casements of the upper stories 
are neither closed nor open, for all the window-frames 
are barred, but the glass is broken. If there is a little 
yard, grass grows between its stones, and the parapet 
of its wall is crumbling away. If there is a garden, it 
is choked with nettles, brambles, and hemlock, and 
strange insects abound in it. The chimneys are cracked, 
the roof is fadling in ; so much as can be seen from 
without of the rooms presents a dismantled appearance. 
The woodwork is rotten, the stone mildewed. The paper 
of the walls has dropped away and hangs loose, until it 
presents a history of the bygone fashions of paper- 
hangings — the scrawling patterns of the time of the 
Empire, the crescent-shaped draperies of the Directory, 
the balustrades and pillars of the days of Louis XVI. 
The thick draperies of cobwebs, filled with flies, indicate 
the quiet reign long enjoyed by innumerable spiders. 
Sometimes a broken jug may be noticed on a shelf. 
Such houses are considered to be haunted. Satan is 
popularly believed to visit them by night. Houses are 
like the human beings who inhabit them. They become 
to their former selves what the corpse is to the living 
body. A superstitious belief among the people is suffi- 
cient to reduce them to this state of death. Then their 
aspect is terrible. These ghostly houses are common in 
the Channel Islands. 

The rural and maritime populations are easily moved 
with notions of the active agency of the powers of evil. 
Among the Channel Isles, and on the neighbouring coast 
of France, the ideas of the people on this subject are 
deeply rooted. In their view, Beelzebub has his ministers 
in all parts of the earth. It is certain that Belphegor 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


13 


is' the ambassador from the infernal regions in France, 
Hutgin in Italy, Belial in Turkey, Thamuz in Spain, 
Martinet in Switzerland, and Mammon in England. 
Satan is an Emperor just like any other — a sort of Satan 
Caesar. His establishment is well organized. Dagon is 
grand almoner ; Succor Benoth, chief of the Eunuchs ; 
Asmodeus, banker at the gaming-table ; Kobal, manager 
of the theatre ; and Verdelet, grand-master of the cere- 
monies. Nybbas is the court fool ; Wierus, a savant, a 
good strygologue, and a man of much learning in demon- 
ology, calls Nybbas the great parodist. 

The Norman fishermen who frequent the Channel have 
many precautions to take at sea, by reason of the illu- 
sions with which Satan environs them. It has long been 
an article of popular faith that Saint Maclou inhabited 
the great square rock called Ortach, in the sea between 
Aurigny and the Casquets ; and many old sailors used to 
declare that they had often seen him there, seated and 
reading in a book. Accordingly the sailors, as they 
passed, were in the habit of kneeling many times before 
the Ortach rock, until the day when the fable was 
destroyed, and the truth took its place. For it has been 
discovered, and is now well established, that the lonely 
inhabitant of the rock is not a saint, but a devil. This 
evil spirit, whose name is Jochmus, had the impudence 
to pass himself off for many centuries as Saint Maclou. 
Even the Church herself is not proof against snares of 
this kiild. The demons Raguhel, Oribel, and Tobiel were 
regarded as saints until the year 745, when Pope Zachary, 
having at length exposed them, turned them out of 
saintly company. This sort of weeding of the saintly 
calendar is certainly very useful ; but it can only be 
practised by very accomplished judges of devils and 
their ways. 


14 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The old inhabitants of these parts relate — though all 
this refers to bygone times — that the Catholic population 
of the Norman Archipelago was once, though quite in- 
voluntarily, even in more intimate correspondence with 
the powers of darkness than the Huguenots themselves. 
How this happened, however, we do not pretend to say ; 
but it is certain that the people suffered considerable 
annoyance from this cause. It appears that Satan had 
taken a fancy to the Catholics, and sought their com- 
pany a good deal — a circumstance which has given rise 
to the belief that the devil is more Catholic than Protes- 
tant. One of his most insufferable familiarities consisted 
in paying nocturnal visits to married Catholics in bed, 
just at the moment when the husband had fallen fast 
asleep and the wife had begun to doze : a fruitful source 
of domestic trouble. Patouillet was of opinion that a 
faithful biography of Voltaire ought not to be without 
some allusion to this practice of the evil one. The truth 
of all this is perfectly well known, and described in the 
forms of excommunication in the rubric de erroribus 
nocturnis et de semine diaholorum. The practice was 
raging particularly at St. Helier’s towards the end of 
the last century, probably as a punishment for the 
Revolution; for the evil consequences of revolutionary 
excesses are incalculable. However this may have been, 
it is certain that this possibility of a visit from the 
demon at night, when it is impossible to see distinctly, 
or even in slumber, caused much embarrassment among 
orthodox dames. The idea of giving to the world a 
Voltaire was by no means a pleasant one. One of these, 
in some anxiety, consulted her confessor on this ex- 
tremely difficult subject, and the best mode for timely 
discovery of the cheat. The confessor replied, “ In order 
to be sure that it is your husband by your side, and not 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


15 


a demon, place your hand upon his head. If you find 
horns, you may be sure there is something wrong.” But 
this test was far from satisfactory to the worthy dame. 

Gilliatt’s house had been haunted, but it was no longer 
in that condition ; it was for that reason, however, only 
regarded with more suspicion. No one learned in demon- 
ology can be unaware of the fact that when a sorcerer 
has installed himself in a haunted dwelling, the devil 
considers the house sufficiently occupied, and is polite 
enough to abstain from visiting there, unless called in, 
like the doctor, on some special occasion. 

This house was known by the name of the Bfi de la 
Rue. It was situated at the extremity of a little prom- 
ontory, rather of rock than of land, forming a small 
harbourage apart in the creek of Houmet Paradis. The 
water at this spot is deep. The house stood quite alone 
upon the point, almost separated from the island, and 
with just sufficient ground about it for a small garden, 
which was sometimes inundated by th*e high tides. 
Between the port of St. Sampson and the cteek of Houmet 
Paradis rises a steep hill, surmounted by the block of 
towers covered with ivy, and known as Vale Castle, or 
the Chateau de FArchange ; so that, at St. Sampson, 
the Bu de la Rue was shut out from sight. 

Nothing is commoner than sorcerers in Guernsey. 
They exercise their profession in certain parishes, in pro- 
found indifference to the enlightenment of the nineteenth 
century. Some of their practices are downright criminal. 
They set gold boiling, they gather herbs at midnight, 
they cast sinister looks upon the people’s cattle. When 
the people consult them they send for bottles containing 
“ water of the sick,” and they are heard to mutter 
mysteriously, the water has a sad look.” In March 
1857 one of them discovered, in water of this kind, seven 


i6 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


demons. They are universally feared. Another only 
lately bewitched a baker as well as his oven.” Another 
had the diabolical wickedness to wafer and seal up, 
envelopes ‘‘ containing nothing inside.” Another went 
so far as to have on a shelf three bottles labelled “ B.” 
These monstrous facts are well authenticated. Some of 
these sorcerers are obliging, and for two or three guineas 
will take on themselves the complaint from which you 
are suffering. Then they are seen to roU upon their 
beds, and to groan with pain ; and while they are in 
these agonies the believer exclaims, “ There ! I am well 
again.” Others cure all kinds of diseases by merely 
tying a handkerchief round their patients’ loins, a remedy 
so simple that it is astonishing that no one had yet 
thought of it. In the last century the Cour Royale of 
Guernsey bound such folks upon a heap of fagots and 
burnt them alive. In these days it condemns them to 
eight weeks’ imprisonment ; four weeks on bread and 
water, and the remainder of the term in solitary con- 
finement. Amant alter na catence. 

The last instance of burning sorcerers in Guernsey took 
place in 1747. The city authorities devoted one of its 
squares, the Carrefour du Bordage, to that ceremony. 
Between 1565 and 1700 eleven sorcerers thus suffered 
at this spot. As a rule the criminals made confession of 
their guilt. The Carrefour du Bordage has indeed ren- 
dered many other services to society and religion. It 
was here that heretics were brought to the stake. Under 
Queen Mary, among other Huguenots burnt here, were 
a mother and two daughters. The name of this mother 
was Perrotine Massy. One of the daughters was enceinte, 
and was delivered of a child even in the midst of the 
flames. As the old chronicle expresses it, Son ventre 
Ulata” The new-born infant rolled out of the fiery fur- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


17 


nace. A man named House took it in his arms ; but 
Helier Gosselin the bailli, like a good Catholic as he was, 
sternly commanded the child to be cast again into the 
fire. 


III. 

FOR YOUR WIFE : WHEN YOU MARRY. 

We must return to Gilliatt. 

The country people told how, towards the close of 
the great Revolution, a woman, bringing with her a httle 
child, came to live in Guernsey’. She was an Enghsh- 
woman ; at least, she was not French. She had a name 
which the Guernsey prommciation and the country folks’ 
bad spelling had finally converted into “ Gilliatt.” She 
lived alone with the child, which, according to some, was 
a nephew ; according to others, a son ; according to 
others, again, a strange child whom she was protecting. 
She had some means ; enough to struggle on in a poor 
way. She had purchased a small plot of ground at La 
Sergentee, and another at La Roque Crespel, near Roc- 
quaine. The house of the Bu de la Rue was haunted 
at this period. For more than thirty years no one had 
inhabited it. It was falling into ruins. The garden, 
so often invaded by the sea, could produce nothing. 
Besides noises and lights seen there at night-time, the 
house had this mysterious peculiarity : any one who 
should leave there in the evening, upon the mantelpiece, 
a ball of worsted, a few needles, and a plate filled with 
soup, would assuredly find in the morning the soup 
consumed, the plate empty, and a pair of mittens ready 
knitted. The house, demon included, was offered for 
sale for a few pounds sterling. The stranger woman 


i8 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. / 

/ 

became the purchaser, evidently tempted by the devil, 
or by the advantageous bargain. 

She did more than purchase the house : she took up 
her abode there with the child ; and from that moment 
peace reigned within its walls. The Bu de la Rue has 
found a fit tenant, said the country people. The haunt- 
ing ceased. There was no longer any light seen there 
save that of the tallow candle of the newcomer. “ Witch’s 
candle is as good as devil’s torch.” The proverb satisfied 
the gossips of the neighbourhood. 

The woman cultivated some acres of land which be- 
longed to her. She had a good cow, of the sort which 
produces yellow butter. She gathered her white beans, 
cauliflowers’ and “ Golden drop ” potatoes. She sold, 
like other people, her parsnips by the tonneau, her onions 
by the hundred, and her beans by the denerel. She did 
not go herself to market, but disposed of her crops 
through the agency of Guilbert Falliot at the sign of 
the Abreveurs of St. Sampson. The register of Falliot 
bears evidence that Falliot sold for her, on one occasion, 
as much as twelve bushels of rare early potatoes. 

The house had been meanly repaired, but sufficiently 
to make it habitable. It was only in very bad weather 
that the raindrops found their way through the ceilings 
of the rooms. The interior consisted of a ground-floor 
suite of rooms, and a granary overhead. The ground- 
floor was divided into three rooms : two for sleeping, 
and one for meals. A ladder connected it with the 
granary above. The woman attended to the kitchen 
and taught the child to read. She did not go to church 
or chapel, which, all things considered, led to the con- 
clusion that she must be French not to go to a place 
of worship. The circumstance was grave. In short, 
the newcomers were a puzzle to the neighbourhood. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


19 


That the woman was French seemed probable. Vol- 
canoes cast forth stones, and revolutions men, so families 
are removed to distant places ; human beings come to 
pass their lives far from their native homes ; groups of 
relatives and friends disperse and decay ; strange people 
fall, as it were, from the clouds — some in Germany, some 
in England, some in America. The people of the country 
view them with surprise and curiosity. Whence come 
these strange faces ? Yonder mountain, smoking with 
revolutionary fires, casts them out. These barren aero- 
lites, these famished and ruined people, these footballs 
of destiny, are known as refugees, ^migr4s, adventurers. 
If they sojourn among strangers, they are tolerated ; 
if they depart, there is a feeling of relief. Sometimes 
these wanderers are harmless, inoffensive people, stran- 
gers — at least, as regards the women — to the events 
which have led to their exile, objects of persecution, 
helpless and astonished at their fate. They take root 
again somewhere as they can. They have done no harm 
to any one, and scarcely comprehend the destiny that 
has befallen them. So thus I have seen a poor tuft of 
grass uprooted and carried away by the explosion of a 
mine. No great explosion was ever followed by more 
of such strays than the first French Revolution. 

The strange woman whom the Guernsey folks called 
“ Gilliatt ” was possibly one of these human strays. 

The woman grew older ; the child became a youth. 
They lived alone and avoided by all ; but they were 
sufficient for each other. Louve et louveteau se pour- 
Uchent. This was another of the generous proverbs 
which the neighbourhood applied to them. Meanwhile, 
the youth grew to manhood ; and then, as the old and 
withered bark falls from the tree, the mother died. 
She left to her son the little field of Sergent6e, the small 


20 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


property called La Roque Crespel, and the house known 
as the de la Rue ; with the addition, cLs the official 
inventory said, of “ one hundred guineas in gold in the 
fid d'une cauche — that is to say, in the foot of a stock- 
ing.” The house was already sufficiently furnished with 
two oaken chests, two beds, six chairs, and a table, 
besides necessary household utensils. Upon a shelf were 
some books, and in the comer a trunk, by no means of 
a mysterious character, which , had to be opened for the 
inventory. This tmnk was of drab leather, ornamented 
with brass nails and little stars of white metal, and it 
contained a bride’s outfit, new and complete, of beautiful 
Dunkirk linen — chemises and petticoats, and some silk 
dresses — with a paper on which was written, in the hand- 
writing of the deceased, — 

“For your wife : when you marry.” 

The loss of his mother was a terrible blow for the 
young man. His disposition had always been unsociable ; 
he became now moody and sullen. The solitude around 
him was complete. Hitherto it had been mere isolation ; 
now his life was a blank. While we have only one com- 
panion, life is endurable ; left alone, it seems as if it is 
impossible to stmggle on, and we fall back in the race, 
which is the first sign of despair. As time rolls on, how- 
ever, we discover that duty is a series of compromises ; 
we contemplate life, regard its end, and submit ; but it 
is a submission which makes the heart bleed. 

Gilliatt was young, and his wound healed with time. 
At that age sorrows cannot be lasting. His sadness, 
disappearing by slow degrees, seemed to mingle itself 
with the scenes around him, to draw him more and more 
towards the face of nature, and farther and farther from 
the need of social converse ; and, finally, to assimilate his 
spirit more completely to the solitude in which he lived. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


21 


IV. 

AN UNPOPULAR MAN. 

Gilliatt, as we have said, was not popular in the parish. 
Nothing could be more natural than that antipathy among 
his neighbours. The reasons for it were abundant. To 
begin with, as we have already explained, there was the 
strange house he lived in ; then there was his mysterious 
origin. Who could that woman have been ? and what 
was the meaning of this child ? Country people do not 
like mysteries when they relate to strange sojourners 
among them. Then his clothes were the clothes of a 
workman, while he had, although certainly not rich, 
sufficient to live without labour. Then there was his 
garden, which he succeeded in cultivating, and from 
which he produced crops of potatoes, in spite of the 
stormy equinoxes ; and then there were the big books 
which he kept upon a shelf, and read from time to time. 

More reasons : why did he live that solitary life ? 
The Bfl de la Rue was a kind of lazaretto, in which 
Gilliatt was kept in a sort of moral quarantine. This, 
in the popular judgment, made it quite simple that 
people should be astonished at his isolation, and should 
hold him responsible for the solitude which society had 
made around his home. 

He never went to chapel. He often went out at night- 
time. He held converse with sorcerers. He had been 
seen on one occasion sitting on the grass with an expres- 
sion of astonishment on his features. He haunted the 
Druidical stones of the Ancresse, and the fairy caverns 
which are scattered about in that part. It was gener- 
ally believed that he had been seen politely saluting the 
Roque qui Chante, or Crowing Rock. He bought all 


22 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

birds which people brought to him, and having bought 
them, set them at liberty. He was civil to the worthy 
folks in the streets of St. Sampson, but willingly turned 
out of his way to avoid them if he could. He often 
went out on fishing expeditions, and always returned 
with fish. He trimmed his garden on Sundays. He 
had a bagpipe which he had bought from one of the 
Highland soldiers who are sometimes in Guernsey, and 
on which he played occasionally at twilight, on the 
rocks by the seashore. He had been seen to make 
strange gestures, like those of one sowing seeds. What 
kind of treatment could be expected for a man like 
that ? 

As regards the books left by the deceased woman, 
which he was in the habit of reading, the neighbours 
were particularly suspicious. The Reverend Jaquemin 
Herode, rector of St. Sampson, when he visited the house 
at the time of the woman’s funeral, had , read on the 
backs of these books the titles Rosier’s Dictionary,” 
‘‘ Candide,” by Voltaire, “ Advice to the People on 
Health,” by Tissot. A French noble, an 6migr6, who had 
retired to St. Sampson, remarked that this Tissot “ must 
have been the Tissot who carried the head of the Princess 
de Lamballe upon a pike.” 

The reverend gentleman had also remarked upon one 
of these books the highly fantastic and terribly signifi- 
cant title, “ De Rhubarbaro.” 

In justice to Gilliatt, however, it must be added that 
this volume being in Latin — a language which it is 
doubtful if he understood — the young man had possibly 
never read it. 

But it is just those books which a man possesses, but 
does not read, which constitute the most suspicious 
evidence against him. The Spanish Inquisition have 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


23 

deliberated on that point, and have come to a conclu- 
sion which places the matter beyond further doubt. 

The book in question, however, was no other than the 
Treatise of Doctor Tilingius upon the Rhubarb plant, 
published in Germany in 1679. 

It was by no means certain that Gilliatt did not pre- 
pare philtres and unholy decoctions. He was undoubtedly 
in possession of certain phials. 

Why did he walk abroad at evening, and sometimes 
even at midnight, on the cliffs ? Evidently to hold 
converse with the evil spirits who, by night, frequent 
the seashores, enveloped in smoke. 

On one occasion he had aided a witch at Torteval to 
clean her chaise : this was an old woman named Moutonne 
Gahy. 

When a census was taken in the island, in answer to 
a question about his calling, he replied, “ Fisherman, 
when there are fish to catch.’’ Imagine yourself in the 
place of Gilliatt’s neighbours, and admit that there is 
something unpleasant in answers like this. 

Poverty and wealth are comparative terms. Gilliatt 
had some fields and a house, his own property ; com- 
pared with those who had nothing, he was not poor. 
One day, to test this, and perhaps also as a step towards 
a correspondence — for there are base women who would 
marry a demon for the sake of riches — a young girl of 
the neighbourhood said to Gilliatt, “ When are you 
going to take a wife, neighbour ? ” He answered, “ I 
will take a wife when the Roque qui Chante takes a 
husband.” 

This Roque qui Chante is a great stone, standing in a 
field near Mons. Lemezurier de Fry’s. It is a stone of 
a highly suspicious character. No one knows what deeds 
are done around it. At times you may hear there a 


24 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


cock crowing when no cock is near — an extremely dis- 
agreeable circumstance. Then it is commonly asserted 
that this stone was originally placed in the field by the 
elfin people known as Sarregousets, who are the same 
as the Sins. 

At night, when it thunders, if you should happen to 
see men flying in the lurid light of the clouds, or on the 
rolling waves of the air, these are no other than the 
Sarregousets. A woman who lives at the Grand Mielles 
knows them well. One evening, when some Sarregousets 
happened to be assembled at a cross-road, this woman 
cried out to a man with a cart, who did not know which 
route to take, “ Ask them your way. They are civil 
folks, and always ready to direct a stranger.** There 
can be little doubt that this woman was a sorceress. 

The learned and judicious King James I. had women 
of this kind boiled, and then tasting the water of the 
cauldron, was able to say from its flavour, That was a 
sorceress ; ” or ‘‘ That was not one.” 

It is to be regretted that the kings of these latter 
days no longer possess a talent which placed in so 
strong a light the utility of monarchical institutions. 

It was not without substantial grounds that Gilliatt 
lived in this odour of sorcery One midnight, during a 
storm, Gilliatt being at sea alone in a bark, on the coast 
by La Sommeilleuse, he was heard to ask, — 

“ Is there a passage sufficient for me ? ” 

And a voice cried from the heights above, — 

Passage enough ; steer boldly.” 

To whom could he have been speaking, if not to those 
who replied to him ? This seems something like evi- 
dence. 

Another time, one stormy evening, when it was so 
dark that nothing could be distinguished, Gilliatt was 


25 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

near the Catiau Roque — a double row of rocks where 
witches, goats, and other diabolical creatures assemble 
and dance on Fridays — and here it is firmly believed 
that the voice of Gilliatt was heard mingling in the 
following terrible conversation : — 

“ How is Vesin Brovard ? ” (This was a mason who 
had fallen from the roof of a house.) 

“ He is getting better.*’ 

Ver dia ! he fell from a greater height than that of 
yonder peak. It is delightful to think that he was not 
dashed to pieces.” 

“ Our folks had a fine time for the seaweed-gathering 
last week.” 

“ Ay, finer than to-day.” 

“ I believe you. There will be little fish at the market 
to-day.” 

“ It blows too hard.” 

‘‘ They can’t lower their nets.” 

'' How is Catherine ? ” 

She is charming.” 

Catherine was evidently the name of a Sarregouset. 

According to all appearance, Gilliatt had business on 
hand at night ; at least none doubted it. 

Sometimes he was seen with a pitcher in his hand, 
pouring water on the ground. Now water, cast upon 
the ground, is known to make a shape like that of devils. 

On the road to Saint Sampson, opposite the Martello 
tower, number i, stand three stones, arranged in the 
form of steps. Upon the platform of those stones, now 
empty, stood anciently a cross, or perhaps a gallov/s. 
These stones are full of evil influences. 

Staid and worthy people, and perfectly credible wit- 
nesses, testified to having seen Gilliatt at this spot con- 
versing with a toad. Now there are no toads at Guernsey, 


26 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the share of Guernsey in the reptiles of the Channel Isles 
consisting exclusively of the snakes. It is Jersey that 
has all the toads. This toad, then, must have swum 
from the neighbouring island, in order to hold converse 
with Gilliatt. The converse was of a friendly kind. 

These facts were clearly established, and the proof is 
that the three stones are there to this day. Those who 
doubt it may go and see them ; and at a little distance 
there is also a house on which the passer-by may read 
this inscription : — 

“ Dealer in cattle, alive and dead, old cordage, 
IRON, BONES, AND TOBACCO FOR CHEWING. PROMPT 
PAYMENT FOR GOODS, AND EVERY ATTENTION 
GIVEN to ORDERS.” 

A man must be sceptical indeed to contest the existence 
of those stones and of the house in question. Now 
both these circumstances were injurious to the reputa- 
tion of Gilliatt. 

Only the most ignorant are unaware of the fact that 
the greatest danger of the coasts of the Channel Islands 
is the King of the Auxcriniers. No inhabitant of the 
seas is more redoubtable. Whoever has seen him is 
certain to be wrecked between one St. Michel and the 
other. He is little, being in fact a dwarf ; and is deaf, 
in his quality of king. He knows the names of all those 
who have been drowned in the seas, and the spots where 
they lie. He has a profound knowledge of that great 
graveyard which stretches far and wide beneath the 
waters of the ocean. A head, massive in the lower part 
and narrow in the forehead ; a squat and corpulent 
figure ; a skull, covered with warty excrescences ; long 
legs, long arms, fins for feet, claws for hands, and a sea- 
green countenance — such are the chief characteristics of 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


this king of the waves. His claws have palms like 
hands ; his fins human nails. Imagine a spectral fish 
with the face of a human being. No power could check 
his career unless he could be exorcised, or mayhap fished 
up from the sea. Meanwhile he continues his sinister 
operations. Nothing is more unpleasant than an inter- 
view with this monster : amid the rolling waves and 
breakers, or in the thick of the mist, the sailor perceives 
sometimes a strange creature with a beetle brow, wide 
nostrils, flattened ears, an enormous mouth, gap-toothed 
jaws, peaked eyebrows, and great grinning eyes. When 
the lightning is' livid, he appears red ; when it is purple, 
he looks wan. He has a stiff, spreading beard, running 
with water, and overlapping a sort of pelerine, orna- 
mented with fourteen shells, seven before and seven 
behind. These shells are curious to those who are 
learned in conchology. The King of the Auxeriniers is 
only seen in stormy seas. He is the terrible harbinger 
of the tempest. His hideous form traces itself in the 
fog, in the squall, in the tempest of rain. His breast is 
hideous. A coat of scales covers his sides like a vest. 
He rises above the waves which fly before the wind, 
twisting and curling like thin shavings of wood beneath 
the carpenter’s plane. Then his entire form issues out 
of the foam, and if there should happen to be in the 
horizon any vessels in distress, pale in the twilight, or 
his face lighted up with a sinister smile, he dances, terrible 
and uncouth to behold. It is an evil omen indeed to 
meet him on a voyage. 

At the period when the people of Saint Sampson were 
particularly excited on the subject of Gilliatt, the last 
persons who had seen the King of the Auxeriniers de- 
clared that his pelerine was now ornamented with only 
thirteen shells. Thirteen ! He was only the more dan- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

oerous. But what had become of the fourteenth ? Had 
he given it to some one ? No one would say positively, 
and folks confined themselves to conjecture. But it was 
an undoubted fact that a certain Mons. Lupin Mabier 
of Godaines, a man of property, paying a good sum to 
the land tax, was ready to depose on oath that he had 
once seen in the hands of Gilliatt a very remarkable 
kind of shell. 

It was not uncommon to hear dialogues like the 
following among the country people : — 

“ I have a fine bull here, neighbour ; what do you 
say ? 

Very fine, neighbour ? '' 

‘‘ It is a fact, tho’ Tis I who say it ; he is better though 
for tallow than for meat.”* 

Ver dia ! ” 

” Are you sure that Gilliatt hasnT cast his eye upon 
it ? ” 

Gilliatt would stop sometimes beside a field where 
some labourers were assembled, or near gardens in which 
gardeners were engaged, and would perhaps hear these 
mysterious words : — 

“ When the mors du diahle flourishes, reap the winter 
rye. 

(The mors du diahle is the scabwort plant.) 

‘‘ The ash tree is coming out in leaf. There will be 
no more frost.” 

” Summer solstice, thistle in flower.” 

'' If it rain not in June, the wheat will turn white. 
Look out for mildew.” 

“ When the wild cherry appears, beware of the full 
moon.” 

” If the weather on the sixth day of the new moon is 
like that of the fourth or like that of the fifth, day, it 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


29 


will be the same nine times out of twelve in the first 
case, and eleven times out of twelve in the second, 
during the whole month.” 

“ Keep your eye on neighbours who go to law with 
you. Beware of malicious influences. A pig which has 
had warm milk given to it will die. A cow which has 
had its teeth rubbed with leeks will eat no more.” 

“ Spawning time with the smelts ; beware of fevers.” 

‘‘ When frogs begin to appear, sow your melons.” 

“ When the liverwort flowers, sow your barley.” 

“ When the limes are in bloom, mow the meadows.” 

“ Wflien the elm tree flowers, open the hot - bed 
frames.” 

“ When tobacco fields are in blossom, close your green- 
houses.” 

And, fearful to relate, these occult precepts were not 
without truth. Those who put faith in them could 
vouch for the fact. 

One night, in the month of June, when Gilliatt was 
playing upon his bagpipe, upon the sand-hills on the 
shore of the Demie de Fontenelle, it had happened that 
the mackerel fishing had failed. 

One evening, at low water, it came to pass that a cart 
filled with seaweed for manure overturned on the beach 
in front of Gilliatt ’s house. It is most probable that he 
was afraid of being brought before the magistrates, for 
he took considerable trouble in helping to raise the cart, 
and he filled it again himself. 

A little neglected child of the neighbourhood being 
troubled with vermin, he had gone himself to St. Peter’s 
Port, and had returned with an ointment, with which 
he rubbed the child’s head. Thus Gilliatt had removed 
the pest from the poor child, which was an evidence that 
Gilliatt himself had originally given it ; for everybody 


^ THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

knows that there is a certain charm for giving vermin to 
people. 

Gilliatt was suspected of looking into wells — a danger- 
ous practice with those who have an evil eye ; and, in 
fact, at Arculons, near St. Peter’s Port, the water of a 
well became unwholesome. The good woman to whom 
this well belonged said to Gilliatt, — 

“ Look here at this water,” and she showed him a 
glassful. Gilliatt acknowledged it. 

“ The water is thick,” he said ; that is true.” 

The good woman, who dreaded him in her heart, said, 
“ Make it sweet again for me.” 

Gilliatt asked her some questions : whether she had a 
stable ? whether the stable had a drain ? whether the 
gutter of the drain did not pass near the well ? The 
good woman replied, Yes.” Gilliatt went into the 
stable, worked at the drain, turned the gutter in another 
direction, and the water became pure again. People in 
the country round might think what they pleased. A 
well does not become foul one moment and sweet the 
next without good cause ; the bottom of the affair was 
involved in obscurity ; and, in short, it was difficult to 
escape the conclusion that Gilliatt himself had bewitched 
the water. 

On one occasion, when he went to Jersey, it was 
remarked that he had taken a lodging in the street called 
the Rue des Alleurs. Now the word alleurs signifies 
spirits from the other world. 

In villages it is the custom to gather together all these 
little hints and indications of a man’s career ; and when 
they are gathered together, the total constitutes his repu- 
tation among the inhabitants. 

It happened that Gilliatt was once caught with blood 
issuing from his nose. The circrmistance appeared grave. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


31 


The master of a barque who had sailed almost entirely 
round the world affirmed that among the Tongusians 
all sorcerers were subject to bleeding at the nose. In 
fact, when you see a man in those parts bleeding at the 
nose, you know at once what is in the wind. Moderate 
reasoners, however, remarked that the Characteristics of 
sorcerers among the Tongusians may possibly not apply 
in the same degree to the sorcerers of Guernsey. 

In the environs of one of the St; Michels he had been 
seen to stop in a close belonging to the Huriaux, skirt- 
ing the highway from the Videclins. He whistled in the 
field, and a moment afterwards a crow alighted there ; 
a moment later, a magpie. The fact was attested by a 
worthy man who has since been appointed to the office 
of Douzenier of the Douzaine, as those are called who 
are authorized to make a new survey and register of the 
fief of the king. 

At Hamel, in the Vingtaine of L’Epine, there lived 
some old women who were positive of having heard one 
morning a number of swallows distinctly calling ‘"Gilliatt.” 

Add to all this that he was of a malicious temper. 

One day a poor man was beating an ass. The ass 
was obstinate. The poor man gave him a few kicks in 
the belly with his wooden shoe, and the ass fell. Gilliatt 
ran to raise the unlucky beast ; but he was dead. Upon 
this Gilliatt administered to the poor man a sound 
thrashing. 

Another day, Gilliatt seeing a boy come down from a 
tree with a brood of little birds, newly hatched and un- 
fledged, he took the brood away from the boy, and carried 
his malevolence so far as even to take them back and 
replace them in the tree. 

Some passers-by took up the boy’s complaint ; but 
Gilliatt made no reply, except to point to the old birds, 


32 


I'HE TOILERS OF IHE SEA. 


who were hovering and crying plaintively over the tree, 
as they looked for their nest. He had a weakness for t 
birds— another sign by which the people recognize a 
magician. 

Children take a pleasure in robbing the nests of birds 
along the cliff. They bring home quantities of yellow, | 
blue, and green eggs, with which they make rosaries for j 
mantelpiece ornaments. As the cliffs are peaked, they 
sometimes slip and are killed. Nothing is prettier than 
shutters decorated with sea-birds’ eggs. Gilliatt’s mis- 
chievous ingenuity had no end. He would climb, at the 
peril of his own life, into the steep places of the sea rocks, 
and hang up bundles of hay, old hats, and all kinds of 
scarecrows, to deter the birds from building there, and, 
as a consequence, to prevent the children from visiting 
those spots. 

These are some of the reasons why Gilliatt was dis- 
liked throughout the country. Perhaps nothing less 
could have been expected. 


V. 

MORE SUSPICIOUS FACTS ABOUT GILLIATT. ! 

Public opinion was not yet quite settled with regard to 
Gilliatt. 

In general he was regarded as a Marcou ; some went so 
far £LS to believe him to be a Cambion. A cambion is the 
child of a woman begotten by a devil. 

When a woman bears to her husband seven male 
children consecutively, the seventh is a marcou. But 
the series must not be broken by the birth of any female I 
child. j 

The marcou has a natural fleur-de-lis imprinted upon i 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


33 


some part of his body, for which reason he has the power 
of curing scrofula, exactly the same as the king of France. 
Marcous are found in all parts of France, but particularly 
in the Orl4anais. Every village of Gatinais has its mar- 
cou. It is sufficient for the cure of the sick that the 
marcou should breathe upon their wounds, or let them 
touch his fleur-de-lis. The night of Good Friday is 
particularly favourable to these ceremonies. Ten years 
ago there lived, at Ormes in Gatinais, one of these crea- 
tures who was nicknamed the Beau Marcou, and con- 
sulted by all the country of Beauce. He was a cooper 
named Foulon, who kept a horse and vehicle. To put 
a stop to his miracles it was found necessary to call in 
the assistance of the gendarmes. His fleur-de-lis was 
on the left breast ; other marcous have it in different 
parts. 

There are marcous at Jersey, Auvigny, and at Guern- 
sey. This fact is doubtless in some way connected with 
the rights possessed by France over Normandy, or why 
the fleur-de-lis ? 

There are also, in the Channel Islands', people afflicted 
with scrofula, which, of course, necessitates a due supply 
of these marcous. 

Some people, who happened to be present one day 
when Gilliatt was bathing in the sea, had fancied that 
they could perceive upon him a fleur-de-lis. Interro- 
gated on that subject he made no reply, but merely 
burst into laughter. From that time, however, no one 
ever saw him bathe : he bathed thenceforth only in 
perilous and solitary places, probably by moonlight — 
a thing in itself somewhat suspicious. 

Those who obstinately regarded him as a cambion, or 
son of the devil, were evidently in error. They ought 
to have known that cambions scarcely exist out of 

2 


34 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Germany. But The Vale and St. Sampson were, fifty 
years ago, places remarkable for the ignorance of their 
inhabitants. 

To fancy that a resident of the island of Guernsey 
could be the son of a devil was evidently absurd. 

Gilliatt, for the very reason that he caused disquietude 
among the people, was sought for and consulted. The 
peasants came in fear, to talk to him of their diseases. 
That fear itself had in it something of faith in his powers ; 
for in the country the more the doctor is suspected of 
magic, the more certain is the cure. Gilliatt had certain 
remedies of his own, which he had inherited from the 
deceased woman. He communicated them to all who 
had need of them, and would never receive money for 
them. He cured whitlows v.ith applications of herbs. 
A liquor in one of his phials allayed fever. The chemist 
of St. Sampson, or pharmacien, as they would call him 
in France, thought that this was probably a decoction 
of Jesuits’ bark. The more generous among his censors 
admitted that Gilliatt was not so bad a demon in his 
dealings with the sick, so far as regarded his ordinary 
remedies. But in his character of a marcou he would 
do nothing. If persons afflicted with scrofula came to 
him to ask to touch the fleur-de-lis on his skin, he made 
no other answer than that of shutting the door in their 
faces. He persistently refused to perform any miracles 
— a ridiculous position for a sorcerer. No one is bound 
to be a sorcerer ; but when a man is one, he ought not 
to shirk the duties of his position. 

One or two exceptions might be found to this almost 
universal antipathy. Sieur Landoys of the Clos-Landes 
was clerk and registrar of St. Peter’s Port, custodian of 
the documents, and keeper of the register of births, 
marriages, and deaths. This Landoys was vain of his 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


35 


descent from Peter Landoys, treasurer of the province 
of Brittany, who was hanged in 1485. One day, when 
Sieur Landoys was bathing in the sea, he ventured to 
swim out too far, and was on the point of drowning. 
Gilliatt plunged into the water, narrowly escaping drown- 
ing himself, and succeeded in saving him. From that 
day Landoys never spoke an evil word of Gilliatt. To 
those who expressed surprise at this change he replied. 

Why should I detest a man who never did me any 
harm, and who has rendered me a service ? ” The parish 
clerk and registrar even came at last to feel a sort of 
friendship for Gilliatt. This public functionary was a 
man without prejudices. He had no faith in sorcerers. 
He laughed at people who went in fear of ghostly visitors. 
For himself, he had a boat in which he amused himself 
by making fishing excursions in his leisure hours ; but 
he had never seen anything extraordinary, unless it was 
on one occasion — a woman clothed in white, who rose, 
about the waters in the light of the moon — and even of 
this circumstance he was not quite sure. Moutonne 
Gahy, the old witch of Torteval, had given him a little 
bag to be worn under the cravat, as a protection against 
evil spirits. He ridiculed the bag, and knew not what 
it contained, though, to be sure, he carried it about him, 
feeling more security with this charm hanging on his neck. 

Some courageous persons, emboldened by the example 
of Landoys, ventured to cite, in Gilliatt’s favour, certain 
extenuating circumstances ; a few signs of good qualities, 
as his sobriety, his abstinence from spirits and tobacco ; 
and sometimes they went so far as to pass this elegant 
eulogium upon him : “ He neither smokes, drinks, chews 
tobacco, nor takes snuff.” 

Sobriety, however, can only count as a virtue when 
there are other virtues to support it. 


36 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The ban of public opinion lay heavily upon Gilliatt. 

In any case, as a marcou, Gilliatt had it in his power 
to render great services. On a certain Good Friday, at 
midnight, a day and an hour propitious to this kind of 
cure, all the scrofulous people of the island, either by 
sudden inspiration or by concerted action, presented 
themselves in a crowd at the Bu de la Rue, and with 
pitiable sores and imploring gestures called on Gilliatt 
to make them clean. But he refused ; and herein the 
people found another proof of his malevolence. 


VI. 

THE DUTCH SLOOP. 

Such was the character of Gilliatt. 

The young women considered him ugly. 

Ugly he was not. He might, perhaps, have been called 
handsome. There was something in his profile of rude 
but antique grace. In repose it had some resemblance 
to that of a sculptured Dacian on the Trajan column. 
His .ears were small, delicate, without lobes, and of an 
admirable form for hearing. Between his eyes he had 
that proud vertical line which indicates in a man bold- 
ness and perseverance. The comers of his mouth were 
depressed, giving a slight expression of bitterness. His 
forehead had a cahn and noble roundness. The clear 
pupils of his eyes possessed a steadfast look, although 
troubled a little with that involuntary movement of the 
eyelids which fishermen contract from the glitter of the 
waves. His laugh was boyish and pleasing. No ivory 
could be of a finer white than his teeth ; but exposure 
to the sun had made him swarthy as a Moor. The ocean. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


37 


the tempest, and the darkness cannot be braved with 
impunity. At thirty he looked already like a man of 
forty-five. He wore the sombre mask of the wind and 
the sea. 

The people had nicknamed him “ Malicious Gilliatt.” 

There is an Indian fable to the effect that one day the 
god Brahma inquired of the Spirit of Power, " Who is 
stronger than thee ? ” and the spirit replied, “ Cunning.” 
A Chinese proverb says, “ What could not the lion do 
if he was the monkey also ? ” Gilliatt was neither the 
lion nor the monkey, but his actions gave some evidence 
of the truth of the Chinese proverb and of the Hindoo 
fable. Although only of ordinary height and strength, 
he was enabled, so inventive and powerful was his dex- 
terity, to lift burdens that might have taxed a giant, 
and to accomplish feats which would have done credit 
to an athlete. 

He had in him something of the power of the g5mmast. 
He used, with equal address, his left hand and his right. 

He never carried a gun, but was often seen with his 
net. He spared the birds, but not the fish. His know- 
ledge and skill as a fisherman were, indeed, very con- 
siderable. He was an excellent swimmer. 

Solitude either develops the mental powers or renders 
men dull and vicious. Gilliatt sometimes presented him- 
self under both these aspects. At times, when his 
features' wore that air of strange surprise already men- 
tioned, he might have been taken for a man of mental 
powers scarcely superior to the savage. At other mo- 
ments an indescribable air of penetration lighted up his 
face. Ancient Chaldea possessed some men of this stamp. 
At certain times the dullness of the shepherd mind be- 
came transparent, and revealed the inspired sage. 

After all, he was but a poor man ; uninstructed, save 


38 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


to the extent of reading and writing. It is probable 
that the condition of his mind was at that limit which 
separates the dreamer from the thinker. The thinker 
wills, the dreamer is a passive instrument. Solitude 
sinks deeply into pure natures, and modifies them in a 
certain degree. They become, unconsciously, penetrated 
with a kind of sacred awe. The shadow in which the 
mind of Gilliatt constantly dwelt was composed in almost 
equal degrees of two elements, both obscure, but very 
different. Within himself all was ignorance and weak- 
ness ; without, infinity and mysterious power. 

By dint of frequent climbing on the rocks, of escalad- 
ing the rugged cliffs, of going to and fro among the 
islands in all weathers, of navigating any sort of craft 
which came to hand, of venturing night and day in diffi- 
cult channels, he had become, without taking count of 
his other advantages, and merely in following his fancy 
and pleasure, a seaman of extraordinary skill. 

He was a bom pilot. The tme pilot is the man who 
navigates the bed of the ocean even more than its sur- 
face. The waves of the sea are an external problem, 
continually modified by the submarine conditions of the 
waters in which the vessel is making her way. To see 
Gilliatt guiding his craft among the reefs and shallows 
of the Norman Archipelago, one might have fancied 
that he carried in his head a plan of the bottom of the 
sea. He was familiar with it all, and feared nothing. 

He was better acquainted with the buoys in the 
channels than the cormorants who make them their 
resting-places. The almost imperceptible differences 
which distinguish the four upright buoys of the Creux, 
Alligande, the Tr^mies, and the Sardrette were per- 
fectly visible and clear to him, even in misty weather. 
He hesitated neither at the oval, apple-headed buoy of 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


39 


Anfr6, nor at the triple iron point of the Rousse, nor at 
the white ball of the Corbette, nor at the black ball of 
Longue Pierre ; and there was no fear of his confound- 
ing the cross of Goubeau with the sword planted in earth 
at La Platte, nor the hammer-shaped buoy of the Bar- 
bies with the curled-tail buoy of the Moulinet. 

His rare skill in seamanship showed itself in a striking 
manner one day at Guernsey, on the occasion of one of 
those sea tournaments which are called regattas. The 
feat to be performed was to navigate alone a boat with 
four sails from St. Sampson to the Isle of Herm, at one 
league distance, and to bring the boat back from Herm 
to St. Sampson. To manage, without assistance, a boat 
with four sails is a feat which every fisherman is equal 
to, and the difficulty seemed little ; but there was a 
condition which rendered it far from simple. The boat, 
to begin with, was one of those large and heavy sloops of 
bygone times which the sailors of the last century knew 
by the name of “ Dutch Belly Boats.” This ancient 
style of flat, pot-bellied craft, carrying on the larboard 
and starboard sides, in compensation for the want of a 
keel, two wings, which lowered themselves, sometimes 
the one, sometimes the other, according to the wind, 
may occasionally be met with still at sea. In the second 
place, there was the return from Herm, a journey which 
was rendered more difficult by a heavy ballasting of stones. 
The conditions were to go empty, but to return loaded. 
The sloop was the prize of the contest. It was dedicated 
beforehand to the winner. This Dutch Belly Boat ” 
had been employed as a pilot-boat. The pilot who had 
rigged and worked it for twenty years was the most 
robust of all the sailors of the Channel. When he died 
no one had been found capable of managing the sloop ; 
and it was, in consequence, determined to make it the 


40 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


prize of the regatta. The sloop, though not decked, had 
some sea qualities, and was a tempting prize for a skilful 
sailor. Her mast was somewhat forward, which in- 
creased the motive-power of her sails, besides having 
the advantage of not being in the way of her pilot. It 
was a strong-built vessel, heavy, but roomy, and taking 
the open sea well ; in fact, a good, serviceable craft. 
There was eager anxiety for the prize ; the task was a 
rough one, but the reward of success was worth having. 
Seven or eight fishermen, among the most vigorous of 
the island, presented themselves. One by one they 
essayed, but not one could succeed in reaching Herm. 
The last one who tried his skill was known for having 
crossed, in a rowing-boat, the terrible narrow sea between 
Sark and Brecq-Hou. Sweating with his exertions, he 
brought back the sloop, and said, “ It is impossible.” 
Gilliatt then entered the bark, seized first of all the oar, 
then the mainsail, and pushed out to sea. Then, with- 
out either making fast the boom, which would have been 
imprudent, or letting it go, which kept the sail under his 
direction, and leaving the boom to move with the wind 
without drifting, he held the tiller with his left hand. 
In three-quarters of an hour he was at Herm. Three 
hours later, although a strong breeze had sprung up and 
was blowing across the roads, the sloop, guided by 
Gilliatt, returned to St. Sampson with its load of stones. 
He had, with an extravagant display of his resources, 
even added to the cargo the little bronze cannon at 
Herm, which the people were in the habit of firing off 
on the 5th of November, by way of rejoicing over the 
death of Guy Fawkes. 

Guy Fawkes, by the way, has been dead one hundred 
and sixty years — a remarkably long period of rejoicing. 

Gilliatt, thus burdened and encumbered, although he 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


4 ^- 


had the Guy Fawkes'-day cannon in the boat and the 
south wind in his sails, steered, or rather brought back, 
the heavy craft to St. Sampson. 

Seeing which, Mess Lethierry exclaimed, ‘‘ There’s a 
bold sailor for you ! ” 

And he held out his hand to Gilliatt. 

We shall have occasion to speak again of Mess 
Lethierry. 

The sloop was awarded to Gilliatt. 

This adventure detracted nothing from his evil reputa- 
tion. 

Several persons declared that the feat was not at all 
astonishing, for that Gilliatt had concealed in the boat 
a branch of wild medlar. But this could not be proved. 

From that day forward Gilliatt navigated no boat 
except the old sloop. In this heavy craft he went on 
his fishing avocation. He kept it at anchor in the 
excellent little shelter which he had all to himself, under 
the very wall of his house of the BCl de la Rue. At 
nightfall he cast his nets over his shoulder, traversed 
his little garden, climbed over the parapet of dry stones, 
stepped lightly from rock to rock, and jumping into the 
sloop, pushed out to sea. 

He brought home heavy takes of fish ; but people 
said that his medlar branch was always hanging up in 
the boat. No one had ever seen this branch, but every 
one believed in its existence. 

When he had more fish than he wanted, he did not 
sell it, but gave it away. 

The poor people took his gift, but were little grateful, 
for they knew the secret of his medlar branch. Such 
devices cannot be permitted. It is unlawful to trick 
the sea out of its treasures. 

He was a fisherman ; but he was something more. 


42 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


He had, by instinct or for amusement, acquired a know- 
ledge of three or four trades. He was a carpenter, worker 
in iron, wheelwright, boat-caulker, and, to some extent, 
an engineer. No one could mend a broken wheel better 
than he could. He manufactured, in a fashion of his 
own, all the things which fishermen use. In a corner of 
the Bu de la Rue he had a small forge and an anvil ; 
and the sloop having but one anchor, he had succeeded, 
without help, in making another. The anchor was excel- 
lent. The ring had the necessary strength ; and Gilliatt, 
though entirely uninstructed in this branch of the smithes 
art, had found the exact dimensions of the stock for 
preventing the overbalancing of the fluke ends. 

He had patiently replaced all the nails in the planks 
by rivets, which rendered rust in the holes impossible. 

In this way he had much improved the sea-going 
qualities of the sloop. He employed it sometimes when 
he took a fancy to spend a month or two in some solitary 
islet, like Chousey or the Casquets. People said, “ Ay, 
ay ! Gilliatt is away ; ” but this was a circumstance 
which nobody regretted. 


VII. 

A FIT TENANT FOR A HAUNTED HOUSE. 

Gilliatt was a man of dreams, hence his daring, hence 
also his timidity. He had ideas on many things which 
were peculiarly his own. 

There was in his character, perhaps, something of the 
visionary and the transcendentalist. Hallucinations may 
haunt the poor peasant like Martin, no less than the 
king like Henry IV. There are times when the unknown 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


43 


reveals itself in a mysterious way to the spirit of man. 
A sudden rent in the veil of darkness will make manifest 
things hitherto unseen, and then close again upon the 
mysteries within. Such visions have occasionally the 
power to effect a transfiguration in those whom they 
visit. They convert a poor camel-driver into a Maho- 
met ; a peasant girl tending her goats into a Joan of 
Arc. Solitude generates a certain amount of sublime 
exaltation. It is like the smoke arising from the burn- 
ing bush. A mysterious lucidity of mind results, which 
converts the student into a seer, and the poet into a 
prophet : herein we find a key to the mysteries of Horeb, 
Kedron, Ombos ; to the intoxication of Castilian laurels, 
the revelations of the month Busion. Hence, too, we 
have Peleia at Dodona, Phemonoe at Delphos, Tropho- 
nius in Lebadea, Ezekiel on the Chebar, and Jerome in 
the Thetais. 

]\Iore frequently this visionary state overwhelms and 
stupefies its victim. There is such a thing as a divine 
besottedness. The Hindoo fakir bears about with him 
the burden of his vision, as the Cretin his goitre. Luther 
holding converse with devils in his garret at Wittenburg, 
Pascal shutting out the view of the infernal regions with 
the screen of his cabinet, the African Obi conversing 
with the white-faced god Bossum, are each and all the 
same phenomenon, diversely interpreted by the minds 
in which they manifest themselves, according to their 
capacity and power. Luther and Pascal were grand, 
and are grand still ; the Obi is simply a poor, half-witted 
creature. 

Gilliatt was neither so exalted nor so low. He was a 
dreamer : nothing more. 

Nature presented itself to him under a somewhat 
strange aspect. 


44 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Just as he had often found in the perfectly limpid 
water of the sea strange creatures of considerable size 
and of various shapes, of the Medusa genus, which out 
of the water bore a resemblance to soft crystal, and 
which, cast again into the sea, became lost to sight in 
that medium by reason of their identity in transparency 
and colour, so he imagined that other transparencies, 
similar to these almost invisible denizens of the ocean, 
might probably inhabit the air around us. The birds 
are scarcely inhabitants of the air, but rather amphibious 
creatures passing much of their lives upon the earth. 
Gilliatt could not believe the air a mere desert. He used 
to say, Since the water is filled with life, why not the 
atmosphere ? ” Creatures colourless and transparent 
like the air would escape from our observation. What 
proof have we that there are no such creatures ? Analogy 
indicates that the liquid fields of air must have their 
swimming habitants, even as the waters of the deep. 
These aerial fish would, of course, be diaphanous ; a 
provision of their wise Creator for our sakes as well as 
their own. Allowing the light to pass through their 
foims, casting no shadow, having no defined outline, 
they would necessarily remain unknown to us, and 
beyond the grasp of human sense. Gilliatt indulged the 
wild fancy that if it were possible to exhaust the earth 
of its atmosphere, or if we could fish the air as we fish 
the depths of the sea, we should discover the existence 
of a multitude of strange animals. And then, he would 
add in his reverie, many things would be made clear. 

Reverie, which is thought in its nebulous state, borders 
closely upon the land of sleep, by which it is bounded as 
by a natural frontier. The discovery of a new world, 
in the form of an atmosphere filled with transparent 
creatures, would be the beginning of a knowledge of the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 45 

vast unknown. But beyond opens up the illimitable 
domain of the possible, teeming with yet other beings, 
and characterized by other phenomena. All this would 
be nothing supernatural, but merely the occult continua- 
tion of the infinite variety of creation. In the midst of 
that laborious idleness, which was the chief feature in 
his existence, Gilliatt was singularly observant. He even 
carried his observations into the domain of sleep. Sleep 
has a close relation with the possible, which we call also 
the invraisemblahle. The world of sleep has an existence 
of its own. Night-time, regarded as a separate sphere 
of creation, is a universe in itself. The material nature 
of man, upon which philosophers tell us that a column 
of air forty-five miles in height continually presses, is 
wearied out at night, sinks into lassitude, lies down, and 
finds repose. The eyes of the flesh are closed ; but in 
that drooping head, less inactive than is supposed, other 
eyes are opened. The unknown reveals itself. The 
shadowy existences of the invisible world become more 
akin to man ; whether it be that there is a real com- 
munication, or whether things far off in the unfathom- 
able abyss are mysteriously brought nearer, it seems as 
if the impalpable creatures inhabiting space come then 
to contemplate our natures, curious to comprehend the 
denizens of the earth. Some phantom creation ascends 
or descends to walk beside us in the dim twilight : some 
existence altogether different from our own, composed 
partly of human consciousness, partly of something else, 
quits his fellows and returns again, after presenting him- 
self for a moment to our inward sight ; and the sleeper, 
not wholly slumbering, nor yet entirely conscious, be- 
holds around him strange manifestations of life — pale 
spectres, terrible or smiling, dismal phantoms, uncouth 
masks, unknown faces, hydra-headed monsters, un- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


46 

defined shapes, reflections of moonlight where there is 
no moon, vague fragments of monstrous forms. All 
these things which come and go in the troubled atmos- 
phere of sleep, and to which men give the name of 
dreams, are, in truth, only realities invisible to those who 
walk about the daylight world. 

So, at least, thought Gilliatt. 


VIII. 

THE GILD-HOLM-'UR SEAT. 

The curious visitor, in these days, would seek in vain 
in the little bay of Houmet for the house in which 
Gilliatt lived, or for his garden, or the creek in which 
he sheltered the Dutch sloop. The Bu de la Rue no 
longer exists. Even the little peninsula on which his 
house stood has vanished, levelled by the pickaxe of the 
quarryman, and carried away, cart-load by cart-load, 
by dealers in rock and granite. It must be sought now 
in the churches, the palaces, and the quays of a great 
city. All that ridge of rocks has been long ago con- 
veyed to London. 

These long lines of broken cliffs in the sea, with their 
frequent gaps and crevices, are like miniature chains of 
mountains. They strike the eye with the impression 
which a giant may be supposed to have in contemplating 
the Cordilleras. In the language of the country they are 
called Banques.^’ These banques vary considerably in 
form. Some resemble a long spine, of which each rock 
forms one of the vertebrae ; others are like the backbone 
of a fish ; while some bear an odd resemblance to a 
crocodile in the act of drinking. 


mE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


47 


At the extremity of the ridge on which the Bfl de la 
Rue was situate was a large rock, which the fishing 
people of Houmet called the “ Beast’s Horn.” This 
rock, a sort of pyramid, resembled, though less in height, 
the “ Pinnacle ” of Jersey. At high water the sea 
divided it from the ridge, and the Horn stood alone ; at 
low water it was approached by an isthmus of rocks. 
The remarkable feature of this “ Beast’s Horn ” was a 
sort of natural seat on the side next the sea, hollowed 
out by the water, and polished by the rains. The seat, 
however, was a treacherous one. The stranger was in- 
sensibly attracted to it by “ the beauty of the prospect,” 
as the Guernsey folks said. Something detained him 
there in spite of himself, for there is a charm in a wide 
view. The seat seemed to offer itself for his conven- 
ience ; it formed a sort of niche in the peaked facade 
of the rock. To climb up to it was easy, for the sea, 
which had fashioned it out of its rocky base, had also 
cast beneath it, at convenient distances, a kind of natural 
stairs composed of flat stones. The perilous abyss is 
full of these snares ; beware, therefore, of its proffered 
aids. The spot was tempting : the stranger mounted 
and sat down. There he found himself at his ease ; for 
his seat he had the granite rounded and hollowed out 
by the foam ; for supports, two rocky elbows which 
seemed made expressly for him ; against his back the 
high vertical wall of rock which he looked up to and 
admired, without thinking of the impossibility of scaling 
it. Nothing could be more simple than to fall into 
reverie in that convenient resting-place. All around 
spread the wide sea ; far off the ships were seen passing 
to and fro. It was possible to follow a sail with the 
eye till it sank in the horizon beyond the Casquets. 
The stranger was entranced : he looked around, enjoy- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


48 

ing the beauty of the scene and the light touch of wind 
and wave. There is a sort of bat found at Cayenne 
which has the power of fanning people to sleep in the 
shade with a gentle beating of its dusky wings. Like 
this strange creature, the wind wanders about, alternately 
ravaging or lulling into security. So the stranger would 
continue contemplating the sea, listening for a move- 
ment in the air, and yielding himself up to dreamy 
indolence. When the eyes are satiated with light and 
beauty, it is a luxury to close them for awhile. Suddenly 
the loiterer would arouse ; but it was too late. The sea 
had crept up step by step ; the waters surrounded the 
rock ; the stranger had been lured on to his death. 

A terrible rock was this in a rising sea. 

The tide gathers at first insensibly, then with violence ; 
when it touches the rocks a sudden wrath seems to 
possess it, and it foams. Swimming is difficult in the 
breakers : excellent swimmers have been lost at the 
Horn of the Bu de la Rue. 

In certain places, and at certain periods, the aspect of 
the sea is dangerous — fatal ; as at times is the glance 
of a woman. 

Very old inhabitants of Guernsey used to call this 
niche, fashioned in the rock by the waves, “ Gild-Holm- 
’Ur ” seat, or Kidormur ; a Celtic word, say some authori- 
ties, which those who understand Celtic cannot interpret, 
and which all who understand French can — “ Qui-dort- 
meurt .• ” * such is the country folks’ translation. 

The reader may choose between fhe translation Qui- 
dort-meurt and that given in 1819, I believe in The 
Armorican, by M. Athenas. According to this learned 
Celtic scholar, Gild-Holm-’Ur signifies “ The resting- 
place of birds.” 


* He who sleeps must die. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


49 


There is, at Aurigny, another seat of this kind, called 
the Monk’s Chair, so well sculptured by the waves, and 
with steps of rock so conveniently placed, that it might 
be said that the sea politely sets a footstool for those 
who rest there. 

In the open sea, at high water, the Gild-Holm-’Ur was 
no longer visible ; the water covered it entirely. 

The Gild-Holm-’Ur was a neighbour of the Bu de la 
Rue. Gilliatt knew it well, and often seated himself 
there. Was it his meditating place ? No. We have 
already said he did not meditate, but dream. The sea, 
however, never entrapped him there. 


BOOK II.— MESS LETHIERRY. 


I. 

A TROUBLED LIFE, BUT A QUIET CONSCIENCE. 

Mess Lethierry, a conspicuous man in St. Sampson, 
was a redoubtable sailor. He had voyaged a great deal. 
He had been a cabin-boy, seaman, topmast-man, second 
mate, mate, pilot, and captain. He was at this period 
a shipowner. There was not a man to compare with 
him for general knowledge of the sea. He was brave 
in putting off to ships in distress. In foul weather he 
would take his way along the beach, scanning the horizon. 
‘‘ What have we yonder ? ” he would say ; “ some craft 
in trouble ? ” Whether it were an interloping Wey- 
mouth fisherman, a cutter from Aurigny, a bisquine from 
Courseulle, the yacht of some nobleman, an English 
craft or a French one — poor or rich, mattered little. 
He jumped into a boat, called together two or three 
strong fellows, or did without them, as the case might 
be, pushed out to sea, rose and sank, and rose again on 
rolling waves, plunged into the storm, and encountered 
the danger face to face. Then afar off, amid the rain 
and lightning, and drenched with water, he was some- 
times seen upright in his boat like a lion with a foaming 
mane. Often he would pass whole days in danger 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


51 


amidst the waves, the hail, and the wind, making his 
way to the sides of foundering vessels during the tempest, 
and rescuing men and merchandise. At night, after 
feats like these, he would return home, and pass his time 
in knitting stockings. 

For fifty years he led this kind of life — from ten years 
of age to sixty — so long did he feel himself still young. 
At sixty he began to discover that he could no longer 
lift with one hand the great anvil at the forge at Varclin. 
This anvil weighed three hundredweight. At length 
rheumatic pains compelled him to be a prisoner ; he 
was forced to give up his old struggle with the sea, to 
pass from the heroic into the patriarchal stage, to sink 
into the’condition of a harmless, worthy old fellow. 

Happily his rheumatism attacks happened at the 
period when he had secured a comfortable competency. 
These two consequences of labour are natural com- 
panions. At the moment when men become rich, how 
often comes paralysis — the sorrowful crowning of a 
laborious life ! 

Old and weary men say among themselves, “ Let us 
rest and enjoy life.” 

The population of islands like Guernsey is composed 
of men who have passed their lives in going about their 
little fields or in sailing round the world. These are the 
two classes of the labouring people : the labourers on 
the land, and the toilers of the sea. Mess Lethierry 
was of the latter class ; he had had a life of hard work. 
He had been upon the Continent ; was for some time a 
ship- carpenter at Rochefort, and afterwards at Cette. 
We have just spoken of sailing round the world ; he had 
made the circuit of all France, getting work as a journey- 
man carpenter, and had been employed at the great 
salt-works of Franche-Comte, Though a humble man, 


52 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


he had led a life of adventure. In France he had learned 
to read, to think, to have a will of his own. He had 
had a hand in many things, and in all he had done had 
kept a character for probity. At bottom, however, he 
was simply a sailor. The water was his element ; he 
used to say that he lived with the fish when really at 
home. In short, his whole existence, except two or 
three years, had been devoted to the ocean. Flung into 
the water, as he said, he had navigated the great oceans 
both of the Atlantic and the Pacific, but he preferred 
the Channel. He used to exclaim enthusiastically, “ That 
is the sea for a rough time of it ! ” He was bom at sea, 
and at sea would have preferred to end his days. After 
sailing several times round the world, and seeihg most 
countries, he had returned to Guernsey, and never per- 
manently left the island again. Henceforth his great 
voyages were to Granville and St. Malo. 

Mess Lethierry was a Guernsey man — that peculiar 
amalgamation of Frenchman and Norman, or rather 
English. He had within himself this quadmple extrac- 
tion, merged and almost lost in that far wider country, 
the ocean. Throughout his life and wheresoever he went 
he had preserved the habits of a Norman fisherman. 

All this, however, did not prevent his looking now and 
then into some old book ; of taking pleasure in reading, 
in knowing the names of philosophers and poets, and in 
talking a little now and then in ail languages. 


A CERTAIN PREDILECTION. 

Gilliatt had in his nature something of the uncivilized 
man ; Mess Lethierry had the same. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


53 

Lethierry’s uncultivated nature, however, was not 
without certain refinements. 

He was fastidious upon the subject of women’s hands. 
In his early years, while still a lad, passing from the 
stage of cabin-boy to that of sailor, he had heard the 
Admiral de Suffren say, There goes a pretty girl ; but 
what horrible great red hands.” An observation from 
an admiral on any subject is a command, a law, an 
authority far above that of an oracle. The exclamation 
of Admiral de Suffren had rendered Lethierry fastidious 
and exacting in the matter of small and white hands. 
His own hand, a large club fist of the colour of mahogany, 
was like a mallet or a pair of pincers for a friendly grasp, 
and, tightly closed, would almost break a paving-stone. 

He had never married ; he had either no inclination 
for matrimony, or had never found a suitable match. 
That, perhaps, was due to his being a stickler for hands 
like those of a duchess. Such hands are, indeed, some- 
what rare among the fishermen’s daughters at Portbail. 

It was whispered, however, that at Rochefort, on the 
Charente, he had, once upon a time, made the acquaint- 
ance of a certain grisette, realizing his ideal. She was a 
pretty girl with graceful hands ; but she was a vixen, 
and had also a habit of scratching. Woe betide any one 
who attacked her ! yet her nails, though capable at a 
pinch of being turned into claws, were of a whiteness 
which left nothing to be desired. It was these peculiarly 
bewitching nails which had first enchanted and then 
disturbed the peace of Lethierry, who, fearing that he 
might one day become no longer master of his mistress, 
had decided not to conduct that young lady to the 
nuptial altar. 

Another time he met at Aurigny a country girl who 
pleased him. He thought of marriage, when one of the 


54 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


inhabitants of the place said to him, I congratulate 
you ; you will have for your wife a good fuel maker.*' 
Lethierry asked the meaning of this. It appeared that 
the country people at Aurigny have a certain custom of 
collecting manure from their cow-houses, which they 
throw against a wall, where it is left to dry and fall to 
the ground. Cakes of dried manure of this kind are 
used for fuel, and are called coipiaux. A country girl 
of Aurigny has no chance of getting a husband if she is 
not a good fuel maker ; but the young lady’s especial 
talent only inspired disgust in Lethierry. 

Besides, he had in his love matters a kind of rough 
country folks’ philosophy, a sailor-like sort of habit of 
mind. Always smitten but never enslaved,' he boasted 
of having been in his youth easily conquered by a petti- 
coat, or rather a cotillon ; for what is nowadays called a 
crinoline, was in his time called a cotillon — a term which, 
in his use of it, signifies both something more and some- 
thing less than a wife. 

These rude seafaring men of the Norman Archipelago 
have a certain amount of shrewdness. Almost all can 
read and write. On Sundays, little cabin-boys may be 
seen in those parts, seated upon a coil of ropes, reading, 
with book in hand. From all time these Norman sailors 
have had a peculiar satirical vein, and have been famous 
for clever sayings. It was one of these men, the bold 
pilot Queripel, who said to Montgomery, when he sought 
refuge in Jersey after the unfortunate accident in killing 
Henry II. at a tournament with a blow of his lance, 
“ Tete folle a cassi tete vide'* Another one, Touzeau, 
a sea-captain at Saint Brelade, was the author of that 
philosophical pun, erroneously attributed to Camus, 
“ Apr^s la mort, les papes deviennent papillons, et les 
sires deviennent cirons” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


55 


The mariners of the Channel are the true ancient 
Gauls. The islands, which in these days become rapidly 
more and more English — preserved for many ages their 
old French character. The peasant in Sark speaks the 
language of Louis XIV. Forty years ago, the old 
classical nautical language was to be found in the mouths 
of the sailors of Jersey and Aurigny. When amongst 
them, it was possible to imagine oneself carried back to 
the sea life of the seventeenth century. From that 
speaking-trumpet which terrified Admiral Hidde, a 
philologist might have learnt the ancient technicalities 
of manoeuvring and giving orders at sea, in the very 
words which were roared out to his sailors by Jean Bart. 
The old French maritime vocabulary is now almost 
entirely changed, but was still in use in Jersey in 1820. 

It was with this uncouth sea dialect in his mouth that 
Duquesne beat De Ruyter, that Duguay Trouin defeated 
Wasnaer, and that Tourville in 1681 poured a broad- 
side into the first galley which bombarded Algiers. It 
is now a dead language. The idiom of the sea is alto- 
gether different. Duperre would not be able to under- 
stand Suffren. 

The language of French naval signals is not less trans- 
formed ; there is a long distance between the four 
pennants, red, white, yellow, and blue, of Labourdonnaye, 
and the eighteen flags of these days, which, hoisted two 
and two, three and three, or four and four, furnish, for 
distant communication, sixty-six thousand combinations, 
are never deficient, and, so to speak, foresee the unfore- 
seen. 


56 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


III. 

MESS LETHIERRY’s VULNERABLE PART. 

Mess Lethierry’s heart and hand were always ready — 
a large heart and a large hand. His failing was that 
admirable one, self-confidence. He had a certain fashion 
of his own of undertaking to do a thing. It was a solemn 
fashion. He said, I give my word of honour to do it, 
with God’s help.” That said, he went through with his 
duty. He put his faith in God — nothing more. The 
little that he went to church was merely formal. At 
sea he was superstitious. 

Nevertheless, the storm had never yet arisen which 
could daunt him. One reason of this was his impatience 
of opposition. He could tolerate it neither from the 
ocean nor anything else. He meant to have his way ; 
so much the worse for the sea if it thwarted him. It 
might try, if it would, but Mess Lethierry would not 
give in. A refractory wave could no more stop him than 
an angry neighbour. What he had said was said ; what 
he planned out was done. He bent neither before an 
objection nor before the tempest. The word “ no ” had 
no existence for him, whether it was in the mouth of 
a man or in the angry muttering of a thunder-cloud. In 
the teeth of all he went on in his way. He would take 
no refusals. Hence his obstinacy in life, and his intre- 
pidity on the ocean. 

He seasoned his simple meal of fish soup for himself, 
knowing the quantities of pepper, salt, and herbs which 
it required, and was as well pleased with the cooking as 
with the meal. To complete the sketch of Lethierry’s 
peculiarities, the reader must conjure a being to whom 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


57 


the putting on of a surtout would amount to a trans- 
figuration ; whom a landsman’s greatcoat would con- 
vert into a strange animal ; one who, standing with his 
locks blown about by the wind, might have represented 
old Jean Beirt, but who, in the landsman’s round hat, 
would have looked an idiot ; awkward in cities, wild 
and redoubtable at sea ; a man with broad shoulders, 
fit for a porter ; one who indulged in no oaths, was 
rarely in anger, whose voice had a soft accent, which 
became like thunder in a speaking-trumpet ; a peasant 
who had read something of the philosophy of Diaerot 
and D’Alembert ; a Guernsey man who had seen the 
great Revolution ; a learned ignoramus, free from big- 
otry, but indulging in visions, with more faith in the 
White Lady than in the Holy Virgin ; possessing the 
strength of Polyphemus, the perseverance of Columbus, 
with a little of the bull in his nature, and a little of the 
child. Add to these physical and mental peculiarities 
a somewhat flat nose, large cheeks, a set of teeth still 
perfect, a face filled with wrinkles, and which seemed 
to have been buffeted by the waves and subjected to 
the beating of the winds of forty years, a brow in which 
the storm and tempest were plainly written — an incarna- 
tion of a rock in the open sea. Add to this, too, a good- 
tempered smile always ready to light up his weather- 
beaten countenance, and you have before you Mess 
Lethieiry. 

Mess Lethieiry had two special objects of affection 
only. Their names were Durande and Deruchette. 


BOOK III.— DURANDE AND 
D^RUCHETTE. 


I. 

PRATTLE AND SMOKE. 

The human body might well be regarded as a mere 
simulacrum ; but it envelopes our reality, it darkens our 
light, and broadens the shadow in which we live. The 
soul is the reality of our existence. Strictly speaking, 
the human visage is a mask. The true man is that 
which exists under what is called man. If that being, 
which thus exists sheltered and secreted behind that 
illusion which we call the flesh, could be approached, 
more than one strange revelation would be made. The 
vulgar error is to mistake the outward husk for the living 
spirit. Yonder maiden, for example, if we could see her 
as she really is, might she not figure as sonie bird of 
the air ? 

A bird transmuted into a young maiden, what could 
be more exquisite. Picture it in your own home, and 
call it Deruchette. Delicious creature 1 One might be 
almost tempted to say, “ Good-morning, Mademoiselle 
Goldfinch.” The wings are invisible, but the chirping 
may still be heard. Sometimes, too, she pipes a clear, 
loud song. In her childlike prattle the creature is, per- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


59 


haps, inferior ; but in her song, how superior hu- 
manity ! When womanhood dawns this angel flies 
away ; but sometimes returns, bringing back a little 
one to a mother. Meanwhile, she who is one day to be 
a mother is for a long while a child; the girl becomes 
a maiden, fresh and joyous as the lark. Noting her 
movements, we feel as if it was good of her not to fly 
away. The dear familiar companion moves at her own 
sweet will about the house ; flits from branch to branch, 
or rather from room to room ; goes to and fro ; ap- 
proaches and retires ; plumes her wings, or rather combs 
her hair, and makes all kinds of gentle noises — murmur- 
ings of unspeakable delight to certain ears. She asks a 
question, and is answered ; is asked something in return, 
and chirps a reply. It is delightful to chat with her 
when tired of serious talk ; for this creature carries with 
her something of her skyey element. She is, as it were, 
a thread of gold interwoven with your sombre thoughts ; 
you feel almost grateful to her for her kindness in not 
making herself invisible, when it would be so easy for 
her to be even impalpable ; for the beautiful is a neces- 
sary of life. There is in this world no function more 
important than that of being charming. The forest 
glade would be incomplete without the humming-bird. 
To shed joy around, to radiate happiness, to cast light 
upon dark days, to be the golden thread of our destiny, 
and the very spirit of grace and harmony, is not this to 
render a service ? Does not beauty confer a benefit 

upon us, even by the simple fact of being beautiful ? 

j Here and there we meet with one who possesses that 
i fairy-like power of enchanting all about her ; sometimes 
;■ she is ignorant herself of this magical influence, which is, 
\ however, for that reason, only the more perfect. Her 

il presence lights up the home ; her approach is like a 


6o 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


cheerful warmth ; she passes by, and we are content ; 
she stays awhile, and we are happy. To behold her is 
to live : she is the Aurora with a human lace. She has 
no need to do more than simply to be : she makes an 
Eden of the house ; Paradise breathes from her ; and 
she communicates this delight to all, without taking 
any greater trouble than that of existing beside them. 
Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know 
how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enor- 
mous chain which all the living, in common, drag behind 
them ? D^ruchette possessed this smile ; we may even 
say that this smile was D6ruchette herself. There is 
one thing which has more resemblance to ourselves than 
even our face, and that is our expression ; but there is 
yet another thing which more resembles us than this, 
and that is our smile. Ddruchette smiling was simply 
D4ruchette. 

There is something peculiarly attractive in the Jersey 
and Guernsey race. The women, particularly the young, 
are remarkable for a pure and exquisite beauty. Their 
complexion is a combination of the Saxon fairness with 
the proverbial ruddiness of the Norman people — ^rosy 
cheeks and blue eyes ; but the eyes want brilliancy. 
The English training ^ulls them. Their liquid glances 
will be irresistible whenever the secret is found of giving 
them that depth which is the glory of ^he Parisienne. 
Happily Englishwomen are not yet quite transformed 
into the Parisian t 5 q)e. D^ruchette was not a Parisian ; 
yet she was certainly not a Guemesiaise. Lethierry 
had brought her up to be neat and delicate and pretty ; 
and so she was. 

D4ruchette had at times an air of bewitching languor, 
and a certain mischief in the eye, which were altogether 
involuntary. She scarcely knew, perhaps, the meaning 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


6i 


of the word love, and yet not unwillingly ensnared those 
about her in the toils. But all this in her was innocent. 
She never thought of marrying. 

D4ruchette had the prettiest little hands in the world, 
and little feet to match them. Sweetness and goodness 
reigned throughout her person ; her family and fortune 
were her uncle Mess Lethierry ; her occupation was only 
to live her daily life ; her accomplishments were the 
knowledge of a few songs ; her intellectual gifts were 
summed up in her simple innocence ; she had the graceful 
repose of the West Indian woman, mingled at times 
with giddiness and vivacity, with the teasing playful- 
ness of a child, yet with a dash of melancholy. Her 
dress was somewhat rustic, and like that peculiar to her 
country — elegant, though not in accordance with the 
fashions of great cities ; for she wore flowers in her 
bonnet all the year round. Add to all this an open 
brow, a neck supple and graceful, chestnut hair, a fair 
skin slightly freckled with exposure to the sun, a mouth 
somewhat large, but well-defined, and visited from time 
to time by a dangerous smile. This was Deruchette. 

Sometimes, in the evening, a little after sunset, at the 
moment when the dusk of the sky mingles with the dusk 
of the sea, and twilight invests the waves with a mysteri- 
ous awe, the people beheld, entering the harbour of St. 
Sampson, upon the dark-rolling waters, a strange, un- 
defined thing, a monstrous form which puffed and blew ; 
a horrid machine which roared like a wild beast, and 
smoked like a volcano ; a species of Hydra foaming among 
the breakers, and leaving behind it a dense cloud, as it 
rushed on towards the town with a frightful beating of 
its fins, and a throat belching forth flame. This was 
Durande. 


62 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


II. 

THE OLD STORY OF UTOPIA. 

A STEAMBOAT WAS a prodigious novelty in the waters 
of the Channel in 182 — . The whole coast of Normandy 
was long strangely excited by it. Nowadays, ten or a 
dozen steam-vessels, crossing and recrossing within the 
bounds of the horizon, scarcely attract a glance from 
loiterers on the shore. At the most, some persons, 
whose interest or business it is to note such things, will 
observe the indications in their smoke of whether they 
bum Welsh or Newcastle coal. They pass, and that is 
all. “ Welcome,” if coming home ; “a pleasant pas- 
sage,” if outward bound. 

Folks were less calm on the subject of these wonderful 
inventions in the first quarter of the present century ; 
and the new and strange machines, and their long lines 
of smoke, regarded with no goodwill by the Channel 
Islanders. In that Puritanical Archipelago, where the 
Queen of England has been censured for violating the 
Scriptures * by using chloroform during her accouche- 
ments, the first steam-vessel which made its appearance 
received the name of the Devil Boat. In the eyes of these 
worthy fishermen, once Catholics, now Calvinists, but 
always bigots, it seemed to be a portion of the infernal 
regions which had been somehow set afloat. A local 
preacher selected for his discourse the question of 
“Whether man has the right to make fire and water 
work together when God had divided them.f This 
beast, composed of iron and fire, did it not resemble 
Leviathan } Was it not an attempt to bring chaos 
again into the universe ? This is not only occasion 

* Genesis, chap. iii. v. 16. t Genesis, chap. i. v. 4- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 63 

on which the progress of civilization has been stigmatized 
as a return to chaos. 

A mad notion — a gross delusion — an absurdity ! ” 
Such was the verdict of the Academy of Sciences when 
consulted by Napoleon on the subject of steamboats, 
early in the present century. The poor fishermen of St. 
Sampson may be excused for not being in scientific 
matters any wiser than the mathematicians of Paris ; 
and in religious matters a little island like Guernsey 
is not bound to be more enlightened than a great con- 
tinent like America. In the year 1807, when the first 
steamboat of Fulton, commanded by Livingston, fur- 
nished with one of Watt’s engines, sent from England, 
and manoeuvred, besides her ordinary crew, by two 
Frenchmen only, Andre Michaux and another, made her 
first voyage from New York to Albany, it happened that 
she set sail on the 17th of August. The Methodists took up 
this important fact, and in numberless chapels preachers 
were heard calling down a malediction on the machine, 
and declaring that this number 17 was no other than 
the total of the ten horns and seven heads of the beast 
of the Apocalypse. In America, they invoked against 
the steamboats the beast from the book of Revelation ; 
in Europe, the reptile of the book of Genesis. This was 
the simple difference. 

The savants had rejected steamboats as impossible ; 
the priests had anathematized them as impious. Science 
had condemned, and religion consigned them to perdi- 
tion. Fulton was a new incarnation of Lucifer. The 
simple people on the coasts and in the villages were con- 
firmed in their prejudice by the uneasiness which they 
felt at the outlandish sight. The religious view of steam- 
boats may be summed up as follows : Water and fire 
were divorced at the creation. This divorce was en- 


64 


I'HE TOII.ERS OF THE SEA, 


joined by God Himself. Mem has no right to join what 
his Maker has put asunder ; to reunite what He has 
disunited. The peasants’ view was simply, “ I don’t 
like the look of this thing.” 

No one but Mess Lethierry, perhaps, could have been 
found at that early period daring enough to dream of 
such an enterprise as the establishment of a steam-vessel 
between Guernsey and St. Malo. He alone, as an in- 
dependent thinker, was capable of conceiving such an 
idea, or, as a hardy mariner, of carrying it out. The 
French part of his nature, probably, conceived the idea ; 
the English part supplied the energy to put it in 
execution. 

How and when this was, we are about to inform the 
reader. 


III. 

RANTAINE. 

About forty years before the period of the commence- 
ment of our narrative, there stood in the suburbs of Paris, 
near the city wall, between the Fosse-aux-Loups and the 
Tombe-Issoire, a house of doubtful reputation. It was 
a lonely, ruinous building, evidently a place for d^k 
deeds on an occasion. Here lived, with his wife ^nd 
child, a species of town bandit ; a man who had b^.en 
clerk to an attorney practising at the Chatelet— he 
figured somewhat later at the Assize Court ; the name 
of this family was Rantaine. On a mahogany chest of 
drawers in the old house were two china cups, orna- 
mented with flowers, on one of which appeared, in gilt 
letters, the words, ” A souvenir of friendship ; ” on the 
other, “ A token of esteem.” The child lived in an 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


65 


atmosphere of vice in this miserable home. The father 
and mother having belonged to the lower middle class, 
the boy had learnt to read, and they brought it up in a 
fashion. The mother, pale and almost in rags, gave 
“ instruction ” as she called it, mechanically, to the 
little one, heard it spell a few words to her, and inter- 
rupted the lesson to accompany her husband on some 
criminal expedition, or to earn the wages of prostitution. 
Meanwhile, the book remained open on the table as she 
had left it, and the boy sat beside it, meditating in his 
way. 

The father and mother, detected one day in onef of 
their criminal enterprises, suddenly vanished into that 
obscurity in which the penal laws envelop convicted 
malefactors. The child too disappeared. 

Lethierry, in his wanderings about the world, stumbled 
one day on an adventurer like himself, helped him out 
of some scrape, rendered him a kindly service, and was 
apparently repaid with gratitude. He took a fancy to 
the stranger, picked him up, and brought him to Guernsey, 
where, finding him intelligent in learning the duties of a 
sailor aboard a coasting-vessel, he made him a com- 
panion. This stranger was the little Rantaine, now 
grown up to manhood. 

Rantaine, like Lethierry, had a bull neck, a large and 
powerful breadth of shoulders for carrying burdens, and 
loins like those of the Farnese Hercules. Lethierry and 
he had a remarkable similarity of appearance : Rantaine 
was the taller. People who saw their forms behind, as 
they were walking side by side along the port, exclaimed, 
“ There are two brothers.” On looking them in the face 
the effect was different : all that was open in the counte- 
nance of Lethierry was reserved and cautious in that of 
Rantaine. Rantaine was an expert swordsman, played 

3 


66 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


on the harmonica, could snuff a candle at twenty paces 
with a pistol-ball, could strike a tremendous blow with 
the fist, recite verses from Voltaire’s “ Henriade,” and 
interpret dreams ; he knew by heart “ Les Tombeaux de 
Saint Denis,” by Treneuil. He talked sometimes of 
having had relations with the Sultan of Calicut, ” whom 
the Portuguese call the Zamorin.” If any one had seen 
the little memorandum-book which he carried about with 
him, he would have found notes and jottings of this 
kind : At Lyons in a fissure of the wall of one of the 

cells in the prison of St. Joseph, a file.” He spoke 
always with a grave deliberation ; he called himself the 
son of a Chevalier de Saint Louis. His linen was of a 
miscellaneous kind, and marked with different initials. 
Nobody was ever more tender than he was on the point 
of honour ; he fought and killed his man. The mother 
of a pretty actress could not have an eye more watchful 
for an insult. 

He might have stood for the personification of subtlety 
under an outer garb of enormous strength. 

It was the power of his fist, applied one day at a fair, 
upon a cabeza de moro, which had originally taken the 
fancy of Lethierry. No one in Guernsey knew anything 
of his adventures. They were of a chequered kind. If 
the great theatre of destiny had a special wardrobe, 
Rantaine ought to have taken the dress of harlequin. 
He had lived, and had seen the world. He had run 
through the gamut of possible trades and qualities ; had 
been a cook at Madagascar, trainer of birds at Honolulu, 
a religious journalist at the Galapagos Islands, a poet at 
Oomrawuttee, a freeman at Haiti. In this latter char- 
acter he had delivered at Grand Goave a funeral oration, 
of which the local journals have preserved this fragment : 
“ Farewell, then, noble spirit. In the azure vault of the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. V 

heavens, where thou wingest now thy flight, thou wilt, 
no doubt, rejoin the good Abb6 Leander Crameau, of 
Little Goave. Tell him that, thanks to ten years of 
glorious efforts, thou hast completed the church of the 
Ansa-h-Veau. Adieu, transcendent genius, model mason ! 
His freemason's mask did not prevent him, as we see, wear- 
ing a little of the Roman Catholic. The former won to his 
side the men of progress, and the latter the men of order. 
He declared himself a white of pure caste, and hated 
the negroes ; though, for all that, he would certainly 
have been an admirer of the Emperor Soulouque. In 
1815, at Bordeaux, the glow of his royalist enthusiasm 
broke forth in the shape of a huge white feather in his 
cap. His life had been a series of eclipses — of «appear- 
ances, disappearances, and reappearances. He was a 
sort of revolving-light upon the coasts of scampdom. 
He knew a little Turkish : instead of “ guillotined " 
would say “ nihoissS” He had been a slave in Tripoli, 
in the house of a Thaleb, and had learnt Turkish by dint 
of blows with a stick. His employment had been to 
stand at evenings at the doors of the mosque, there to 
read aloud to the faithful the Koran inscribed upon slips 
of wood, or pieces of camel leather. It is not improbable 
that he was a renegade. 

He was capable of everything, and something worse. 

He had a trick of laughing loud and knitting his brows 
at the same time. He used to say, In politics, I esteem 
only men inaccessible to influences ; ” or, “ I am for 
decency and good morals ; " or, ‘‘ The pyramid must be 
replaced upon its base.” His manner was rather cheer- 
ful and cordial than otherwise. The expression of his 
mouth contradicted the sense of his words. His nostrils 
had an odd way of distending themselves. In the comers 
of his eyes he had a little network of wrinkles, in which 


68 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


all sorts of dark thoughts seemed to meet together. It 
was here alone that the secret of his physiognomy could 
be thoroughly studied. His flat foot was a vulture’s 
claw. His skull was low at the top and large about the 
temples. His ill-shapen ear, bristled with hair, seemed 
to say, “ Beware of speaking to the animal in this cave.” 

One fine day, in Guernsey, Rantaine was suddenly 
missing. 

Lethierry’s partner had absconded, leaving the treasury 
of their partnership empty. 

In this treasury there was some money of Rantaine’s, 
no doubt, but there were also fifty thousand francs be- 
longing to Lethierry. 

By forty years of industry and probity as a coaster 
and ship carpenter, Lethierry had saved one hundred 
thousand francs. Rantaine robbed him of half the 
sum. 

Half ruined, Lethierry did not lose heart, but began 
at once to think how to repair his misfortune. A stout 
heart may be ruined in fortune, but not in spirit. It 
was just about that time that people began to talk of 
the new kind of boat to be moved by steam-engines. 
Lethierry conceived the idea of trying Fulton’s invention, 
so much disputed about ; and by one of these fire-boats 
to connect the Channel Islands with the French coast. 
He staked his all upon this idea ; he devoted to it the 
wreck of his savings. Accordingly, six months after 
Rantaine’s flight, the astonished people of St. Sampson 
beheld, issuing from the port, a vessel discharging huge 
volumes of smoke, and looking like a ship a-fire at sea. 
This was the first steam-vessel to navigate the Channel. 

This vessel, to which the people in their dislike and 
contempt for novelty immediately gave the nickname 
of “ Lethierrj^’s Galley,” was announced as intended to 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 69 

maintain a constant communication between Guernsey 
and St. Malo. 


IV. 

CONTINUATION OF THE STORY OF UTOPIA. 

It may well be imagined that the new enterprise did 
not prosper much at first. The owners of cutters passing 
between the island of Guernsey and the French coast 
were loud in their outcries. They denounced this attack 
upon the Holy Scriptures and their monopoly. The 
chapels began to fulminate against it. One reverend 
gentleman, named Elihu, stigmatized the new steam- 
vessel as an “ atheistical construction,” and the sailing- 
boat was declared the only orthodox craft. The people 
saw the horns of the devil among the beasts which the 
fire-ship carried to and fro. This storm of protest con- 
tinued a considerable time. At last, however, it began 
to be perceived that these animals arrived less tired and 
sold better, their meat being superior ; that the sea-risk 
was less also for passengers ; that this mode of travelling 
was less expensive, shorter, and more sure ; that they 
started at a fixed time, and arrived at a fixed time ; 
that consignments of fish travelling faster arrived fresher, 
and that it was now possible to find a sale in the French 
markets for the surplus of great takes of fish so common 
in Guernsey. The butter, too, from the far-famed 
Guernsey cows made the passage quicker in the “ Devil 
Boat ” than in the old sailing vessels, and lost nothing 
of its good quality, insomuch that Dinan, in Brittany, 
began to become a customer for it, as well as St. Brieuc and 
Rennes. In short, thanks to what they called “ Lethi- 
erry’s Galley,” the people enjoyed safe travelling, regu- 


70 


TEU TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


lar communication, prompt and easy passages to and 
fro, an increase of circulation, an extension of markets 
and of commerce, and, finally, it was felt that it was 
necessary to patronize this “ Devil Boat,” which flew in 
the face of the Holy Scriptures, and brought wealth to 
the island. Some daring spirits even went so far as to 
express a positive satisfaction at it. Sieur Landoys, 
the registrar, bestowed his approval upon the vessel — 
an undoubted piece of impartiality on his part, as he 
did not like Lethierry. For, first of all, Lethierry was 
entitled to the dignity of “ Mess,” while Landoys was 
merely “ Sieur Landoys.” Then, although registrar of 
St. Peter’s Port, Landoys was a parishioner of St. Samp- 
son. Now, there was not in the entire parish another 
man besides them devoid of prejudices. It seemed little 
enough, therefore, to indulge themselves with a detesta- 
tion of each other. Two of a trade, says the proverb, 
rarely agree. 

Sieur Landoys, however, had the honesty to support 
the steamboat. Others followed Landoys. By little 
and little these facts multiplied. The growth of opinion 
is like the rising tide. Time and the continued and 
increasing success of the venture, with the evidence of 
real service rendered and the improvement in the general 
welfare, gradually converted the people ; and the day 
at length arrived when, with the exception of a few wise- 
‘ acres, every one admired Lethierry’s Galley.” 

It would probably win less admiration nowadays. 
This steamboat of forty years since would doubtless 
provoke a smile among our modem boat-builders ; for 
this marvel was ill-shaped ; this prodigy was clumsy and 
infirm. 

The distance between our grand Atlantic steam- 
vessels of the present day and the boats with wheel- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


71 


paddles which Denis Papin floated on the Fulda in 1707 
is not greater than that between a three-decker, like the 
Montebello, 200 feet long, having a mainyard of 115 feet, 
carrying a weight of 3,000 tons, 1,100 men, 120 guns, 
10,000 cannon-balls, and 160 packages of canister, belch- 
ing forth at every broadside, when in action, 3,300 pounds 
of iron, and spreading to the wind, when it moves, 5,600 
square metres of canvas, and the old Danish galley of 
the second century, discovered, full of stone hatchets, 
and bows and clubs, in the mud of the seashore, at Wester- 
Satrup, and preserved at the Hotel de Ville at Flensburg. 

Exactly one hundred years — from 1707 to 1807 — 
separate the first paddle-boat of Papin from the first 
steamboat of Fulton. Lethierry’s galley was assuredly 
a great improvement upon those two rough sketches ; 
but it was itself only a sketch. For all that, it was a 
masterpiece in its way. Every scientific discovery in 
embryo presents that double aspect — a monster in the 
foetus, a marvel in the germ. 


V. 

THE DEVIL BOAT.” 

V 

“ Lethierry’s Galley ” was not masted with a view to 
sailing well ; a fact which was not a defect ; it is, indeed, 
one of the laws of naval construction. Besides, her mo- 
tive power being steam, her sails were only accessory. A 
paddle steamboat, moreover, is almost insensible to sails. 
The new steam-vessel was too short, round, and thick- 
set. She had too much bow, and too great a breadth of 
quarter. The daring of inventors had not yet reached 
the point of making a steam-vessel light ; Lethierry’s 


72 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


boat had some of the defects of Gilliatt’s Dutch sloop. 
She pitched very little, but she rolled a good deal. Her 
paddle-boxes were too high. She had too much beam 
for her length. The massive machinery encumbered her, 
and to make her capable of carrying a heavy cargo, her 
constructors had raised her bulwarks to an unusual 
height, giving to the vessel the defects of old seventy- 
fours, a bastard model which would have to be cut 
down to render them really seaworthy or fit to go into 
action. Being short, she ought to have been able to 
veer quickly — the time employed in a manoeuvre of that 
kind being in proportion to the length of the vessel — 
but her weight deprived her of the advantage of her 
shortness. Her midship-frame was too broad — a fact 
which retarded her ; the resistance of the sea being 
proportioned to the largest section below the water-line, 
and to the square of the speed. Her prow was vertical, 
which would not be regarded as a fault at the present 
day, but at that period this portion of the construction 
was invariably sloped at an angle of forty-five degrees. 
All the curving lines of the hull agreed well together. 
The rudder was the old-fashioned bar-rudder, not the 
wheeled one of the present time. Two skiffs, a species 
of you-yous, were suspended to the davits. The vessel 
had four anchors : the sheet anchor, the second or work- 
ing anchor, and two bower anchors. These four anchors, 
slung by chains, were moved, according to the occasion, 
by the great capstan of the poop, or by the small capstan 
at the prow. At that period the pump windlass had not 
superseded the intermitting efforts of the old handspike. 
Having only two bower-anchors, one on the starboard 
and the other on the larboard side, the vessel could not 
move conveniently in certain winds, though she could 
aid herself at such times with the second anchor. Her 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


73 


speed was six knots an hour. When lying-to she rode 
well. Take her as she was, “ Lethierry’s Galley ” was a 
good sea-boat ; but people felt that in moments of danger 
from reefs or water-spouts she would be hardly manage- 
able. Unhappily her build made her roll about on the 
waves, with a perpetual creaking like that of a new 
shoe. 

She was, above all, a merchandise boat, and, like all 
ships built more for commerce than for fighting, was 
constructed exclusively with a view to stowage. She 
carried few passengers. The transport of cattle rendered 
stowage difficult and very peculiar. Vessels carried 
bullocks at that time in the hold, which was a complica- 
tion of the difficulty. At the present day they are stowed 
on the fore-deck. The paddle-boxes of Lethierry’s 
‘‘ Devil Boat ” were painted white, the hull, down to 
the water-line, red, and all the rest of the vessel black, 
according to the somewhat ugly fashion of this century. 
When empty she drew seven feet of water, and when 
laden fourteen. 

With regard to the engine, it was of considerable 
power. To speak exactly, its power was equal to that 
of one horse to every three tons burden, which is almost 
equal to that of a tug-boat. The paddles were well 
placed, a little in advance of the centre of gravity of the 
vessel. The maximum pressure of the engine was equal 
to two atmospheres. It consumed a great deal of coal, 
although it was constructed on the condensation and 
expansion principles. For that period the engine seemed, 
and indeed was, admirable. It had been constructed in 
France, at the works at Bercy. Mess Lethierry had 
roughly sketched it : the engineer who had constructed 
it in accordance with his diagram was dead, so that the 
engine was unique, and probably could not have been 


74 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


replaced. The designer still lived, but the constructor 
was no more. 

The engine had cost forty thousand francs. 

Lethierry had himself constructed the “ Devil Boat ” 
upon the great covered stocks by the side of the first 
tower between St. Peter’s Port and St. Sampson. He 
had been to Breme to buy the wood. All his skill as a 
shipwright was exhausted in its construction ; his in- 
genuity might be seen in the planks, the seams of which 
were straight and even, and covered with sarangousti, 
an Indian mastic, better than resin. The sheathing was 
well beaten. To remedy the roundness of the hull, 
Lethierry had fitted out a boom at the bowsprit, which 
allowed him to add a false spritsail to the regular one. 
On the day of the launch he cried aloud, “ At last I am 
afloat ! ” The vessel was successful, in fact, as the reader 
has already learnt. 

Either by chance or design she had been launched 
on the 14th of July, the anniversary of the taking of the 
Bastille. On that day, mounted upon the bridge between 
the two paddle-boxes, looked Lethierry upon the sea, and 
exclaimed, “It is your turn now ! The Parisians took 
the Bastille, now science takes the sea.” 

Lethierry’s boat made the voyage from Guernsey to 
St. Malo once a week. She started on the Tuesday 
morning, and returned on the Friday evening, in time 
for the Saturday market. She was a stronger craft than 
any of the largest coasting-sloops in all the Archipelago, 
and her capacity being in proportion to her dimensions, 
one of her voyages was equal to four voyages of an 
ordinary boat in the same trade ; hence they were very 
profitable. The reputation of a vessel depends on its 
stowage, and .Lethierry was an admirable stower of 
cargo. When he was no longer able to work himself, 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


75 


he trained up a sailor to undertake this duty. At the 
end of two years, the steamboat brought in a clear seven 
hundred and fifty pounds sterling a year, or eighteen 
thousand francs. The pound sterling of Guernsey is 
worth twenty-four francs only, that of England twenty- 
five, and that of Jersey twenty-six. These differences 
are less unimportant than they seem : the banks, at all 
events, know how to turn them to advantage. 


VI. 

lethierry’s exaltation. 

The “ Devil Boat ” prospered. Mess Lethierry began 
to look forward to the time when he should be called 
“ Monsieur.’' At Guernsey, people do not become mon- 
sieurs ” at one bound. Between the plain man and the 
gentleman there is quite a scale to chmb. To begin 
with, we have the simple name, plain “ Peter,” let us 
suppose ; the second step is “ Neighbour Peter ; ” the 
third, Father Peter ; ” the fourth, Sieur Peter ; ” 
the fifth, Mess Peter ; ” and then we reach the summit 
in “ Monsieur Peter.” 

This scale ascending thus from the ground is carried 
to still greater heights. All the upper classes of Eng- 
land join on and continue it. Here are the various 
steps, becoming more and more glorious. Above the 
Monsieur, or “ Mr.” there is the “ Esquire ; ” above the 
squire, the knight ; above the knight, still rising, we 
have the baronet, the Scotch laird, the baron, the vis- 
count, the earl (called count in France, and jarl in Nor- 
way), the marquis, the duke, the prince of the blood 
royal, and the king ; so, by degrees, we ascend from the 


76 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


people to the middle class, from the middle class to the 
baronetage, from the baronetage to the peerage, from 
the peerage to royalty. 

Thanks to his successful ingenuity, thanks to steam, 
and his engines, and the “ Devil Boat,” Mess Lethierry 
was fast becoming an important personage. When 
building his vessel he had been compelled to borrow 
money. He had become indebted at Breme, he had 
become indebted at St. Malo ; but every year he dimin- 
ished his obligations. 

He had, moreover, purchased on credit, at the very 
entrance to the port of St. Sampson, a pretty stone-built 
house, entirely new, situate between the sea and a garden. 
On the corner of this house was inscribed the name of 
the “ Brav^es.” Its front formed a part of the wall of 
the port itself, and it was remarkable for a double row 
of windows : on the north, alongside a httle enclosure 
filled with flowers, and on the south commanding a view 
of the ocean. It had thus two fafades, one open to the 
tempest and the sea, the other looldng into a garden 
filled with roses. 

These two frontages seemed made for the two inmates 
of the house — Mess Lethierry and Deruchette. 

The '' Brav^es ” was popular at St. Sampson, for Mess 
Lethierry had at length become a popular man. This 
popularity was due partly to his good nature, his devoted- 
ness, and his courage ; partly to the number of lives he 
had saved ; and a great deal to his success, and to the 
fact that he had awarded to St. Sampson the honour of 
being the port of the departure and arrival of the new 
steamboat. Having made the discovery that the “ Devil 
Boat ” was decidedly a success, St. Peter’s, the capital, 
desired to obtain it for that port, but Lethierry held 
fast to St. Sampson. It was his native town. “ It 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


77 


was there that I was first pitched into the water,” he 
used to say ; hence his great local popularity. His posi- 
tion as a small landed proprietor paying land-tax made 
him what they call in Guernsey an unhabitant. He 
was chosen douzenier. The poor sailor had mounted 
five out of six steps of the Guernsey social scale ; he had 
attained the dignity of “ Mess ; ” he was rapidly approach- 
ing the Monsieur ; and who could predict whether he 
might not even rise higher than that ? who could say 
that they might not one day find in the almanack of 
Guernsey, under the heading of “ Nobihty and Gentry,” 
the astonishing and superb inscription — Lethierry, Esq. ? 

But Mess Lethierry had nothing of vanity in his nature, 
or he had no sense of it ; or if he had, disdained it : to 
know that he was useful was his greatest pleasure ; to 
be popular touched him less than being necessary ; he 
had, as we have already said, only two objects of delight, 
and consequently only two ambitions : the Durande 
and D6ruchette. 

However this may have been, he had embarked in 
the lottery of the sea, and had gained the chief prize. 

This chief prize was the Durande steaming away in 
all her pride. 


VII. 

THE SAME GODFATHER AND THE SAME PATRON SAINT. 

Having created his steamboat, Lethierry had christened 
it : he had called it Durande — “ La Durande.” We will 
speak of her henceforth by no other name ; we will claim 
the liberty, also, in spite of typographical usage, of not 
italicizing this name Durande ; conforming in this to 
the notion of Mess Lethierry, in whose eyes La Durande 
was almost a living person. 


78 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Durande and Deruchette are the same name. Deru- 
chette is the diminutive. 

This diminutive is very common in France. 

In the country the names of saints are endowed with 
all these diminutives as well as all their augmentatives. 
One might suppose there were several persons when 
there is, in fact, only one. This system of patrons and 
patronesses under different names is by no means rare. 
Lise, Lisette, Lisa, Ehsa, Isabelle, Lisbeth, Betsy, all 
these are simply Elizabeth. It is probable that Mahout, 
Maclou, Malo, and Magloire are the same saint : this, 
however, we do not vouch for. 

Saint Durande is a saint of I’Angoumois, and of the 
Charente ; whether she is an orthodox member of the cal- 
endar is a question for the Bollandists : orthodox or not, 
she has been made the patron saint of numerous chapels. 

It was while Lethierry was a young sailor at Roche- 
fort that he had made the acquaintance of this saint, 
probably in the person of some pretty Charantaise, per- 
haps in that of the grisette with the white nails. The 
saint had remained sufficiently in his memory for him 
to give the name to the two things which he loved most — ■ 
Durande to the steamboat, Deruchette to the girl. 

Of one he was the father, of the other the uncle. 

Deruchette was the daughter of a brother who had 
died : she was an orphan child ; he had adopted her, 
and had taken the place both of father and mother. 

Deruchette was not only his niece, she was his god- 
child ; he had held her in his arms at the baptismal font ; 
it was he who had chosen her patron saint, Durande, 
and her Christian name, Deruchette. 

Deruchette, as we have said, was born at St. Peter’s 
Port. Her name was inscribed at its date on the register 
of the parish. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


79 


As long as the niece was a child, and the uncle poor, 
nobody took heed of her appellation of Deruchette ; but 
when the little girl became a miss, and the sailor a 
gentleman, the name of Deruchette shocked the feehngs 
of Guernsey society. The uncouthness of the sound 
astonished every one. Folks asked Mess Lethierry “ why 
Deruchette ? ” He answered, “It is a very good name 
in its way.” Several attempts were made to get him to 
obtain a change in the baptismal name, but he would 
be no party to them. One day, a fine lady of the upper 
circle of society in St. Sampson, the wife of a rich retired 
ironfounder, said to Mess Lethierry, “ In future I shall 
call your daughter Nancy.’' 

“ If names of country towns are in fashion,” said he, 
“ why not Lons le Saulnier ? ” The fine lady did not 
yield her point, and on the morrow said, “ We are deter- 
mined not to have it Deruchette ; I have found for yom: 
daughter a pretty name— Marianne” “ A very pretty 
name indeed,” replied Mess Lethierry, “ composed of 
two words which signify — a husband and an ass.” He 
held fast to Deruchette. 

It would be a mistake to infer from Lethierry’s pun 
that he had no wish to see his niece married. He desired 
to see her married certainly, but in his own way ; he 
intended her to have a husband after his own heart, one 
who would work hard, and whose wife would have Httle 
to do. He liked rough hands in a man, and delicate ones 
in a woman. To prevent Deruchette spoiling her pretty 
hands he had always brought her up like a young lady ; ■ 
he had provided her with a music-master, a piano, a 
little library, and a few needles and threads in a pretty 
work-basket. She was, indeed, more often reading than 
stitching ; more often playing than reading. This was 

♦ A play upon the French words, ma\i and dne. 


8o 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


as Mess Lethierry wished it. To be charming was all 
that he expected of her. He had reared the young girl 
like a flower. Whoever has studied the character jof 
sailors will understand this ; rude and hard in thfeir 
nature, they have an odd partiahty for grace and deli- 
cacy. To reahze the idea of the uncle, the niece ought 
to have been rich ; so indeed felt Mess Lethierry. His 
steamboat voyaged for this end. The mission of Durande 
was to provide a marriage portion for Deruchette. 


VIII. 

“BONNIE DUNDEE.” 

Deruchette occupied the prettiest room at the Brav^es. 
It had' two windows, was furnished with various articles 
made of fine-grained mahogany, had a bed with four 
curtains, green and white, and looked out upon the 
garden, and beyond it towards the high hiU, on which 
stands the Vale Castle. Gilhatt’s house, the Bu de la 
Rue, was on the other side of this hill. 

Deruchette had her music and piano in this chamber ; 
she accompanied herself on the instrument when singing 
the melody which she preferred — the melancholy Scottish 
air of “ Bonnie Dundee.” The very spirit of night 
breathes in this melody ; but her voice was full of the 
freshness bf dawn. The contrast was quaint and pleas- 
ing ; people said, “ Miss Deruchette is at her piano.” 

The passers-by at the foot of the hill stopped some- 
times before the wall of the garden of the Brav^es to 
listen to that sweet voice and plaintive song. 

Deruchette was the very embodiment of joy as she 
went to and fro in the house. She brought with her a 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


8i 


perpetual spring. She was beautiful, but more pretty 
than beautiful ; and still more graceful than pretty. 
She reminded the good old pilots, friends of Mess Lethierry , 
of that princess in the song which the soldiers and sailors 
sing, who was so beautiful — 

“ Qu’elle passait pour telle dans le regiment.” 

Mess Lethierry used to say, '' She has a head of hair like 
a ship’s cable.” 

From her infancy she had been remarkable for beauty. 
The learned in such matters had grave doubts about her 
nose, but the little one having probably determined to 
be pretty, had finally satisfied their requirements. She 
grew to. girlhood without any serious loss of beauty; 
her nose became neither too long nor too short ; and 
when grown up, her critics admitted her to be charming. 

She never addressed her uncle otherwise than as father. 

Lethierry allowed her to soil her fingers a little in 
gardening, and even in some kind of household duties : 
she watered her beds of pink hollyhocks, purple fox- 
gloves, perennial phloxes, and scarlet herb bennets. She 
took good advantage of the chmate of Guernsey, so 
favourable to flowers. She had, like many other persons 
there, aloes in the open ground, and, what is more diffi- 
cult, she succeeded in cultivating the Nepaulese cinque- 
foil. Her little kitchen-garden was scientifically arranged ; 
she was able to produce from it several kinds of rare 
vegetables. She sowed Dutch cauliflower and Brussels 
cabbages, which she thinned out in July, turnips for 
August, endive for September, short parsnip for the 
autumn, and rampions for winter. Mess Lethierry did 
not interfere with her in this, so long as she did not 
handle the spade and rake too much, or meddle with the 
coarser kinds of garden labour. He had provided her 


82 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


with two servants, one named Grace, and the other, 
Douce, which are favourite names in Guernsey. Grace 
and Douce did the hard work of the house and garden, 
and they had the right to have red hands. 

With regard to Mess Lethierry, his room was a little 
retreat with a view over the harbour, and communicating 
with the great lower room of the ground floor, on which 
was situated the door of the house, near which the various 
staircases met. 

His room was furnished with his hammock, his chron- 
ometer, and his pipe : there were also a table and a 
chair. The ceding had been whitewashed, as well as 
the four walls. A fine marine map, bearing the inscrip- 
tion W. Faden, 5 Charing Cross, Geographer to his 
Majesty, and representing the Channel Islands, was 
nailed up at the side of the door ; and on the left, stretched 
out and fastened with other nails, appeared one of those 
large cotton handkerchiefs on which are printed, in 
colours, the signals of all countries in the world, having 
at the four comers the standards of France, Russia, 
Spain, and the United States, and in the centre the 
Union Jack of England. 

Douce and Grace were two faithful creatures within 
certain limits. Douce was good-natured enough, and 
Grace was probably good-looking. Douce was un- 
married, and had secretly “ a gaUant.” In the Channel 
Islands the word is common, as indeed is the fact itself. 
The two girls regarded as servants had something of the 
Creole in their character, a sort of slowness in their 
movements, not out of keeping with the Norman spirit 
pervading the relations of servant and master in the 
Channel Islands. Grace, coquettish and good-looking, 
was always scanning the future with a nervous anxiety. 
This arose from the fact of her not only having, like 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Douce, “ a gallant/* but also, as the scandal-loving 
averred, a sailor husband, whose return one day was a 
thing she dreaded. This, however, does not concern us. 
In a household less austere and less innocent. Douce 
would have continued to be the servant, but Grace 
would have become the souhrette. The dangerous talents 
of Grace were lost upon a young mistress so pure and 
good as Ddruchette. For the rest, the intrigues of Douce 
and Grace were cautiously concealed. Mess Lethierry 
knew nothing of such matters, and no token of them 
had ever reached D^ruchette. 

The lower room of the ground floor, a hall with a 
large fireplace and surrounded with benches and tables, 
had served in the last century as a meeting-place for a 
conventicle of French Protestant refugees. The sole 
ornament of the bare stone wall was a sheet of parch- 
ment, set in a frame of black wood, on which were re- 
presented some of the charitable deeds of the great 
Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. Some poor diocesans of this 
famous orator, sumamed the “ Eagle,” persecuted by 
him at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
and driven to take shelter at Guernsey, had hung this 
picture on the wall to preserve the remembrance of those 
facts. The spectator who had the patience to decipher 
a rude handwriting in faded ink might have learnt the 
following facts, which are but little known : — “ 29th 
October, 1685, Monsieur the Bishop of Meaux appeals 
to the king to destroy the temples of Morcef and Nan- 
teuil.** — " 2nd April, 1686, Arrest of Cochard, father and 
son, for their religious opinions, at the request of Mon- 
sieur the Bishop of Meaux. Released : the Cochards 
having recanted.** — 28th October, 1699, Monsieur the 
Bishop of Meaux sent to Mde. Pontchartrain a petition 
of remonstrance, pointing out that it will be necessary 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


to place the young ladies named Chalandes and de 
Neuville, who are of the reformed religion, in the House 
of the ‘ New Cathohcs ’ at Paris.” — 7th July, 1703, the 
king’s order executed as requested by Monsieur the 
Bishop of Meaux, for shutting up in an asylum Baudouin 
and his wife, two bad Cathohcs of Fublaines.” 

At the end of the hall, near the door of Mess Lethierry’s 
room, was a Httle corner with a wooden partition, which 
had been the Huguenot’s sanctum, and had become, 
thanks to its row of rails and a small hole to pass paper 
or money through, the steamboat office — ^that is to say, 
the office of the Durande, kept by Mess Lethierry in 
person. Upon the old oaken reading-desk, where once 
rested the Holy Bible, lay a great ledger with its alter- 
nate pages headed Dr. and Cr. 


IX. 

THE MAN WHO DISCOVERED RANTAINE’S CHARACTER. 

As long as Mess Lethierry had been able to do duty, 
he had commanded the Durande, and had had no other 
pilot or captain but himself ; but a time had come, as 
we have said, when he had been compelled to find a 
successor. He had chosen for that purpose Sieur Clubin 
of Torteval, a taciturn man. Sieur Clubin had a char- 
acter upon the coast for strict probity. He became the 
alter ego, the double of Mess Lethierry. 

Sieur Clubin, although he had rather the look of a 
notary than of a sailor, was a mariner of rare skill. He 
had all the talents which are required to meet dangers 
of every kind. He was a skilful stower, a safe man aloft, 
an able and careful boatswain, a powerful steersman. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


85 


an experienced pilot, and a bold captain. He was 
prudent, and he carried his prudence sometimes to the 
point of daring, which is a great quahty at sea. His 
natural apprehensiveness of danger was tempered by a 
strong instinct of what was possible in an emergency. 
He was one of those mariners who will face risks to a 
point perfectlj” well known to themselves, and who 
generally manage to come successfully out of every peril. 
Every certainty which a man can command, dealing 
with so fickle an element as the sea, he possessed. Sieur 
Gubin, moreover, was a renowned swimmer ; he was one 
of that race of men, broken into the buffeting of the 
waves, who can remain as long as they please in the 
water — ^who can start from the Havre-des-Pas at Jersey, 
double the Colettes, swim round the Hermitage and 
Castle Elizabeth, and return in two hours to the point 
from which they started. He came from Torteval, 
where he had the reputation of often having swum 
across the passage so much dreaded, from the Hanway 
rocks to the point of Pleinmont. 

One circumstance which had recommended Sieur Gubin 
to Mess Lethierry more than any other was his having 
judged correctly the character of Rantaine. He had 
pointed out to Lethierry the dishonesty of the man, 
and had said, “ Rantaine will rob you.” His prediction 
was verified. More than once — in matters, it is true, 
not very important — Mess Lethierry had put his ever- 
scrupulous honesty to the proof ; and he freely com- 
municated with him on the subject of his affairs. Mess 
Lethierry used to say, “ A good conscience expects to 
be treated with perfect confidence.” 


86 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


X. 

LONG YARNS. 

Mess Lethierry, for the sake of his own ease, always 
wore his seafaring clothes, and preferred his tarpaulin 
overcoat to his pilot jacket. Deruchetle felt vexed 
occasionally about this peculiarity. Nothing is prettier 
than a pouting beauty. She laughed and scolded. My 
dear father,” she would say, what a smell of pitch ! ” 
and she would give him a gentle tap upon his broad 
shoulders. 

This good old seaman had gathered from his voyages 
many wonderful stories. He had seen at Madagascar 
birds’ feathers three of which sufficed to make a roof 
of a house. He had seen in India field sorrel the stalks 
of which were nine inches high. In New Holland he 
had seen troops of turkeys and geese led about and 
guarded by a bird, like a flock by a shepherd’s dog : 
this bird was called the Agami. He had visited ele- 
phants’ cemeteries. In Africa he had encountered 
gorillas, a terrible species of man-monkey. He knew 
the ways of all the ape tribe, from the wild dog-faced 
monkey, which he called the Macaco-bravo, to the 
howling monkey or Macaco-harhado. In Chili he had 
seen a pouched monkey move the compassion of the 
huntsman by showing its Httle one. He had seen in 
California a hollow trunk of a tree fall to the ground, 
so vast that a man on horseback could ride one hundred 
paces inside. In Morocco he had seen the Mozabites 
and the Bisskris fighting with matraks and bars of iron 
— the Bisskris, because they had been called kelhs, which 
means dogs ; and the Mozabites, because they had been 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 87 

treated as khamsi, which means people of the fifth sect. 
He had seen in China the pirate Chanh-thong-quan-larh- 
Quoi cut to pieces for having assassinated the Ap of a 
village. At Thu-dan-mot he had seen a .lion carry off 
an old woman in the open market-place. He was present 
at the arrival of the Great Serpent brought from Canton 
to Saigon to celebrate in the pagoda of Cho-len the fete 
of Quan-nam, the goddess of navigators. He had be- 
held the great Quan-Sd among the Moi. At Rio de 
Janeiro he had seen the Brazilian ladies in the evening 
put little balls of gauze into their hair, each containing 
a beautiful kind of firefly ; and the whole forming a 
headdress of little twinkling lights. He had combated 
in Paraguay with swarms of enormous ants and spiders, 
big and downy as an infant’s head, and compassing with 
their long legs a third of -a yard, and attacking men by 
pricking them with their bristles, which enter the skin 
as sharp as arrows, and raise painful blisters. On the 
river Arinos, a tributary of the Tocantins, in the virgin 
forests to the north of Diamantina, he had determined 
the existence of the famous bat-shaped people, the Mur- 
cilagos, or men who are born with white hair and red 
eyes, who live in the shady solitudes of the woods, sleep 
by day, awake by night, and fish and hunt in the dark, 
seeing better then than by the light of the moon. He 
told how, near Beyrout, once in an encampment of an' 
expedition of which he formed part, a rain gauge belong- 
ing to one of the party happened to be stolen from a 
tent. A wizard, wearing two or three strips of leather 
only, and looking like a man having nothing on but his 
braces, thereupon rang a bell at the end of a horn so 
violently that a hyena finally answered the summons 
by bringing back the missing instrument. The hyena 
was, in fact, the thief. These veritable histories bore 


88 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

a strong resemblance to fictions ; but they amused 
D^ruchette. 

The poupee or ‘‘ doll ” of the Durande, as the people of 
the Channel Islands call the figurehead of a ship, was the 
connecting link between the vessel and Lethierry’s niece. 

The poupee of the Durande was particularly dear to 
Mess Lethierry. He had instructed the carver to make 
it resemble Deruchette. It looked like a rude attempt 
to cut out a face with a hatchet ; or like a clumsy log 
tr 3 dng hard to look like a girl. 

This unshapely block produced a great effect upon 
Mess Lethierry’s imagination. He looked upon it with 
an almost superstitious admiration. His faith in it was 
complete. He was able to trace in it an excellent re- 
semblance to Deruchette. Thus the dogma resembles 
the truth, and the idol the deity. 

Mess Lethierry had two grand fete days in every week ; 
one was Tuesday, the other Friday. His first dehght 
consisted in seeing the Durande weigh anchor ; his 
second in seeing her enter the port again. He leaned 
upon his elbows at the window contemplating his work, 
and was happy. 

On Fridays, the presence of Mess Lethierry at his 
window was a signal. When people passing the Bravees 
saw him lighting his pipe, they said, “ Ay ! the steam- 
boat is in sight.” One kind of smoke was the herald 
of the other. 

The Durande, when she entered the port, made her 
cable fast to a huge iron ring under Mess Lethierry’s 
window, and fixed in the basement of the house. On 
those nights Lethierry slept soundly in his hammock, 
with a soothing consciousness of the presence of Deru- 
chette asleep in her room near him, and of the Durande 
moored opposite. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


89 

The moorings of the Durande were close to the great 
bell of the port. A little strip of quay passed thence 
before the door of the Brav4es. 

The quay, the Brav6es and its house, the garden, the 
alleys bordered with edges, and the greater part even 
of the surrounding houses, no longer exist. The demand 
for Guernsey granite has invaded these too. The whole 
of this part of the town is now occupied by stonecutters' 
yards. 


XI. 

MATRIMONIAL PROSPECTS. 

D^ruchette was approaching womanhood, and was still 
unmarried. 

Mess Lethierry in bringing her up to have white hands 
had also rendered her somewhat fastidious. A training 
of that kind has its disadvantages ; but Lethierry was 
himself still more fastidious. He would have liked to 
have provided at the same time for both his idols — to 
have found in the guide and companion of the one a 
commander for the other. What is a husband but the 
pilot on the voyage of matrimony ? Why not then the 
same conductor for the vessel and for the girl ? The 
affairs of a household have their tides, their ebbs and 
flows, and he who knows how to steer a bark ought to 
know how to guide a woman’s destiny, subject as both 
are to the influences of the moon and the wind. Sieur 
Clubin being only fifteen years younger than Lethierry, 
would necessarily be only a provisional master for the 
Durande. It would be necessary to find a young cap- 
tain, a permanent master, a true successor of the founder, 
inventor, and creator of the first channel steamboat. 


90 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


A captain for the Durande who should come up to his 
ideal would have been already almost a son-in-law in 
Lethierry’s eyes. Why not make him a son-in-law in 
a double sense ? The idea pleased him. The husband 
in posse of D^ruchette haunted his dreams. His ideal 
was a powerful seaman, tanned and browned by weather — 
a sea athlete. This, however, was not exactly the ideal 
of D6ruchette. Her dreams, if dreams they could even 
be called, were of a more ethereal character. 

The uncle and the niece were, at all events, agreed in 
not being in haste to seek a solution of these problems. 
When Deruchette began to be regarded as a probable 
heiress, a crowd of suitors had presented themselves. 
Attentions under these circumstances are not generally 
worth much. Mess Lethierry felt this. He would 
grumble ‘out the old French proverb, “ A maiden of gold, 
a suitor of brass.** He politely showed the fortune- 
seekers to the door. He was content to wait, and so 
was Deruchette. 

It was, perhaps, a singular fact that he had httle 
inchnation for the local aristocracy. In that respect 
Mess Lethierry showed himself not entirely English. It 
will hardly be believed that he even refused for Deru- 
chette a Ganduel of Jersey and a Bugnet-Nicolin of 
Sark. People were bold enough to affirm, although we 
doubt if this were possible, that he had even declined 
the proposals of a member of the family of Edou, which 
is evidently descended from “ Edou-ard ” (Anglice 
Edward) the Confessor. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


91 


XII. 

AN ANOMALY IN THE CHARACTER OF LETHIERRY. 

Mess Lethierry had a failing, and a serious one. He 
detested a priest ; though not as an individual, but as 
an institution. Reading one day — for he used to read 
— in a work of Voltaire — for he would even read Voltaire 
— the remark that priests “ have Something cat-like in 
their nature,” he laid down the book, and was heard to 
mutter, ” Then I suppose I have something dog-like in 
mine.” 

It must be remembered that the priests — Lutheran 
and Calvinist, as well as Catholic — had vigorously com- 
bated the new “ Devil Boat,” and had persecuted its 
inventor. To be a sort of revolutionist in the art of 
navigation, to introduce a spirit of progress in the 
Norman Archipelago, to disturb the peace of the poor 
little island of Guernsey with a new invention, was in 
their eyes, as we have not concealed from the reader, 
an abominable and most condemnable rashness. Nor 
had they omitted to condemn it pretty loudly. It must 
not be forgotten that we are now speaking of the Guernsey 
clergy of a bygone generation, very different from that 
of the present time, who in almost all the local places 
of worship display a laudable sympathy with progress. 
They had embarrassed Lethierry in a hundred ways ; 
eveiy sort of resisting force which can be found in ser- 
mons and discourses had been employed against him. 
Detested by the churchmen, he naturally came to detest 
them in his^ turn. Their hatred was the extenuating 
circumstance to be taken into account in judging of his. 

But it must be confessed that his dislike for priests 


92 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


was, in some degree, in his very nature. It was hardly 
necessary for them to hate him in order to inspire him 
with aversion. As he said, he moved among them like 
the dog among cats. He had an antipathy to them, not 
only in idea, but in what is more difficult to analyze, 
his instincts. He felt their secret claws, and showed 
his teeth; sometimes, it must be confessed, a little at 
random and out of ‘season. It is a mistake to make no 
distinctions : a dislike in the mass is a prejudice. The 
good Savoyard cure would have found no favour in 
his eyes. It is not certain that a worthy priest was even 
a possible thing in Lethierry’s mind. His philosophy 
was carried so far that his good sense sometimes aban- 
doned him. There is such a thing as the intolerance of 
tolerants, as well as the violence of moderates. But 
Lethierry was at bottom too good-natured to be a thor- 
ough hater. He did not attack so much as avoid. He 
kept the church people at a distance. He suffered evil 
at their hands ; but he confined himself to not wishing 
them any good. The shade of difference, in fact, be- 
tween his aversion and theirs lay in the fact that they 
bore animosity, while he had only a strong antipathy. 
Small as is the island of Guernsey, it has, unfortunately, 
plenty of room for differences of religion : there, to take 
the broad distinction, is the Catholic faith and the 
Protestant faith ; every form of worship has its temple 
or chapel. In Germany, at Heidelberg, for example, 
people are not so particular : they divide a church in 
two — one half for St. Peter, the other half for Calvin ; 
and between the two is a partition to prevent religious 
variances terminating in fisticuffs. The shares are equal : 
the Catholics have three altars, the Huguenots three 
altars. As the services are at the same hours, one bell 
summons both denominations to prayers ; it rings, in 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 93 

fact, both for God and for Satan, according as each 
pleases to regard it. Nothing can be more simple. 

The phlegmatic character of the Germans favours, I 
suppose, this peculiar arrangement ; but in Guernsey 
every religion has its own domicile : there are the ortho- 
dox parish and the heretic parish ; the individual may 
choose. Neither one nor the other ” was the choice 
of Mess Lethierry. 

This sailor, workman, philosopher, and parvenu trader, 
though a simple man in appearance, was by no means 
simple at bottom. He had his opinions and his preju- 
dices. On the subject of the priests he was immovable ; 
he would have entered the lists with Montlosier. 

Occasionally he indulged in rather disrespectful jokes 
upon this subject. He had certain odd expressions there- 
upon peculiar to himself, but significant enough. Going 
to confession he cfalled “ combing one’s conscience.” The 
little learning that he had — a certain amount of reading 
picked up here and there between the squalls at sea — did 
not prevent his making blunders in spelling. He made 
also mistakes in pronunciation, some of which, however, 
gave a double sense to his words, which might have been 
suspected of a sly intention. 

Though he was a strong anti-papist, that circumstance 
was far from conciliating the Anglicans. He was no 
more liked by the Protestant rectors than by the Catholic 
cur4s. The enunciation of the greatest dogmas did not 
prevent his anti-theological temper bursting forth. Acci- 
dent, for example, having once brought him to hear a 
sermon on eternal punishment by the Reverend Jaquemin 
Herode — a magnificent discourse, filled from one end to 
the other with sacred texts, proving the everlasting pains, 
the tortures, the torments, the perditions, the inexorable 
chastisements, the burnings without end, the inextin- 


94 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


guishable maledictions, the wrath of the Almighty, the 
celestial fury, the divine vengeance, and other incon- 
testable realities — ^he was heard to say as he was going 
out in the midst of the faithful flock, “You see, I have 
an odd notion of my own on this matter : I imagine God 
as a merciful being.” 

This leaven of atheism was doubtless due to his so- 
journ in France. 

Although a Guernsey man of pure extraction, he was 
called in the island “ the Frenchman ; ” but chiefly on 
account of his “ improper ” manner of speaking. He 
did not indeed conceal the truth from himself. He was 
impregnated with ideas subversive of estabhshed institu- 
tions. His obstinacy in constructing the “ Devil Boat ” 
had proved that. He used to say, “ I have a little of 
’89 in my head ” — a doubtful sort of avowal. These 
were not his only indiscretions. In France “ to preserve 
appearances,” in England “to be respectable,” is the 
chief condition of a quiet life. To be respectable implies 
a multitude of little observances, from the strict keeping 
of Sunday down to the careful tying of a cravat. " To 
act so that nobody may point at you ” — this is the 
terrible social law. To be pointed at with the finger is 
almost the same thing as an anathematization. Little 
towns, always hotbeds of gossip, are remarkable for that 
isolating malignancy, which is like the tremendous male- 
diction of the Church seen through the wrong end of the 
telescope. The bravest are afraid of this ordeal. They 
are ready to confront the storm, the fire of cannon, but 
they shrink at the glance of “ Mrs. Gnindy.” Mess 
Lethierry was more obstinate than lo^cal ; but under 
pressure even his obstinacy would bend. He put — to 
use another of his phrases, eminently suggestive of latent 
compromises, not always pleasant to avow — “ a little 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


95 


water in his wine.'’ He kept aloof from the clergy, but 
he did not absolutely close his door against them. On 
official occasions, and at the customary epochs of pastoral 
visits, he received with sufficiently good grace both the 
Lutheran rector and the Papist chaplain. He had even, 
though at distant intervals, accompanied D6ruchette to 
the Anglican parish church, to which D^ruchette herself, 
as we have said, only went on the four great festivals 
of the year. 

On the whole, these little concessions, which always 
cost him a pang, irritated him ; and far from inclining 
him towards the Church people, only increased his in- 
ward disinclination to them. He compensated himself 
by more raillery. His nature, in general so devoid of 
bitterness, had no uncharitable side except this. To 
alter him, however, was impossible. 

In fact, this was in his very temperament, and was 
beyond his own power to control. 

Every sort of priest or clergyman was distasteful to 
him. He had a little of the old revolutionary want of 
reverence. He did not distinguish between one form of 
worship and another. He did not do justice to that 
great step in the progress of ideas, the denial of the real 
presence. His short-sightedness in these matters even 
prevented his perceiving any essential difference between 
a minister and an abb4. A reverend doctor and a rever- 
end father were pretty nearly the same to him. He used 
to say, ‘‘ Wesley is not more to my taste than Loyola.” 
When he saw a reverend pastor walking with his wife, 
he would turn to look at them, and mutter, ‘‘ A married 
priest,” in a tone which brought out all the absurdity 
which those words had in the ears of Frenchmen at 
that time. He used to relate how, on his last voyage 
to England, he had seen the “ Bishop^ss ” of London. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


96 

His dislike for marriages of that sort amounted almost 
to disgust. Gown and gown do not mate well,” he 
would say. The sacerdotal function was to him in the 
nature of a distinct sex. It would have been natural 
to him to have said, “ Neither a man nor a woman, only 
a priest ; ” and he had the bad taste to apply to the 
Anglican and the Roman Catholic clergy the same dis- 
dainful epithets. He confounded the two cassocks in 
the same phraseology. He did not take the trouble to 
vary in favour of Catholics or Lutherans, or whatever 
they might be, the figures of speech common among 
military men of that period. He would say to Deru- 
chette, “Marry whom you please, provided you do not 
marry a parson.” 


XIII. 

THOUGHTLESSNESS ADDS A GRACE TO BEAUTY. 

A WORD once said. Mess Lethierry remembered it ; a 
word once said, D6ruchette soon forgot it. Here was 
another difference between the uncle and the niece. 

Brought up in the peculiar way already described, 
Deruchette was little accustomed to responsibility. 
There is a latent danger in an education not sufficiently 
serious, which cannot be too much insisted on. It is per- 
haps unwise to endeavour to make a child happy too soon. 

So long as she was happy, Deruchette thought all was 
well. She knew, too, that it was always a pleasure to 
her uncle to see her pleased. The religious sentiment in 
her nature was satisfied with going to the parish church 
four times in the year. We have seen her in her Qhrist- 
mas Day toilet. Of life she was entirely ignorant. She 
had a disposition which one day might lead her to love 
passionately. Meanwhile she was contented. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


97 


She sang by fits and starts, chatted by fits and starts, 
enjoyed the hour as it passed, fulfilled some little duty, 
and was gone again, and was delightful in all. Add to 
all this the English sort of liberty which she enjoyed. 
In England the very infants go alone, girls are their 
own mistresses, and adolescence is almost wholly un- 
restrained. Such are the differences of manners. Later, 
how many of these free maidens become female slaves ? 
I use the word in its least odious sense ; I mean that they 
are free in the development of their nature, but slaves 
to duty. 

D^ruchette awoke every morning with little thought 
of her actions of the day before. It would have troubled 
her a good deal to have had to give an account of how 
she had spent her time the previous week. All this, 
however, did not prevent her having certain hours of 
strange disquietude ; times when some dark cloud 
seemed to pass over the brightness of her joy. Those 
azure depths are subject to such shadows ! But clouds 
like these soon passed away. She quickly shook off such 
moods with a cheerful laugh, knowing neither why she 
had been sad, nor why she had regained her serenity. 
She was always at play. As a child, she would take 
delight in teasing the passers-by. She played practical 
jokes upon the boys. If the fiend himself had passed 
that way, she would hardly have spared him some in- 
genious trick. She was pretty and innocent ; and she 
could abuse the immunity accorded to such qualities. 
She was ready , with a smile, as a cat with a stroke of her 
claws. So much the worse for the victim of her scratches. 
She thought no more of them. Yesterday had no exist- 
ence for her. She lived in the fullness of to-day. Such 
it is to have too much happiness fall to one’s lot ! With 
D4ruchette impressions vanished like the melted snow. 

4 


BOOK IV.— THE BAGPIPE. 


I. 

STREAKS OF FIRE IN THE HORIZON. 

Gilliatt had never spoken to D4nichette ; he knew her 
from having seen her at a distance, as men know the 
morning star. 

At the period when Derachette had met Gilliatt on 
the road -leading from St. Peter’s Port to Vale, and had 
surprised him by tracing his name in the snow, she was 
just sixteen years of age. Only the evening before. Mess 
Lethierry had said to her, “ Come, no more childish 
tricks ; you are a great girl.” 

That word “ Gilliatt,” written by the young maiden, 
had sunk into an unfathomed depth. 

What were women to Gilliatt ? He could not have 
answered that question himself. When he met one he 
generally inspired her with something of the timidity 
which he felt himself. He never spoke to a woman 
except from urgent necessity. He had never played the 
part of a “ gallant ” to any one of the country girls. 
When he found himself alone on the road, and perceived 
a woman coming towards him, he would climb over a 
fence, or bury himself in some copse : he even avoided 
old women. Once in his life he had seen a Parisian' 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


99 


lady. A Parisienne on the wing was a strange event in 
Guernsey at that distant epoch ; and Gilliatt had heard 
this gentle lady relate her little troubles in these words : 
“ I am very much annoyed ; I have got some spots of 
rain upon my bonnet. Pale buff is a shocking colour 
for rain.^" Having found, some time afterwards between 
the leaves of a book, an old engraving, representing “ a 
lady of the Chaussee d'Antin ** in full dress, he had stuck 
it against the wall at home as a souvenir of this remark- 
able apparition. 

On that Christmas morning when he had met D6ru- 
chette, and when she had written his name and dis- 
appeared laughing, he returned home, scarcely conscious 
of why he had gone out. That night he slept little ; he 
was dreaming of a thousand things : that it would be 
well to cultivate black radishes in the garden ; that he 
had not seen the boat from Sark pass by ; had anything 
happened to it ? Then he remembered that he had seen 
the white stonecrop in flower, a rare thing at that season. 
He had never known exactly who was the woman who 
had reared him, and he made up his mind that she must 
have been his mother, and thought of her with redoubled 
tenderness. He called to mind the lady’s clothing in 
the old leathern trunk: He thought that the Reverend 
Jaquemin H^rode would probably one day or other be 
appointed dean of St. Peter’s Port and surrogate of the 
bishop, and that the rectory of St. Sampson would 
become vacant. Next, he remembered that the morrow 
of Christmas would be the twenty-seventh day of the 
moon, and that consequently high water would be at 
twenty-one minutes past three, the half-ebb at a quarter 
past seven, low water at thirty-three minutes past nine, 
and half-flood at thirty-nine minutes past twelve. He 
recalled, in the most trifling details, the costume of the 


100 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Highlander who had sold him the bagpipe ; his bonnet 
with a thistle ornament, his cla3miore, his close-fitting 
short jacket, his philabeg ornamented with a pocket, 
and his snuff-horn, his pin set with a Scottish stone, his 
two girdles, his sash and belts, his sword, cutlass, dirk, 
and skene-dhu ; his black-sheathed knife, with its black 
handle ornamented with two cairngorms, and the bare 
knees of the soldier ; his socks, gaiters, and buckled 
shoes. This highly equipped figure became a spectre in 
his imagination, which pursued him with a sense of 
feverishness as he sunk into oblivion. When he awoke 
it was full daylight, and his first thought was of D6ru- 
chette. 

The next night he slept more soundly, but he was 
dreaming again of the Scottish soldier. In the midst of 
his sleep he remembered that the after-Christmas sittings 
of the Chief Law Court would commence on the 21st of 
January. He dreamed also about the Reverend Jaque- 
min H^rode. He thought of D6ruchette, and seemed 
to be in violent anger with her. He wished he had been 
a child again to throw stones at her windows. Then he 
thought that if he were a child again he should have 
his mother by his side, and he began to sob. 

Gilliatt had a project at this time of going to pass 
three months at Chousey, or at the Miriquiers ; but he 
did not go. 

He walked no more along the road to St. Peter’s Port. 

He had an odd fancy that his name of “ Gilliatt ” had 
remained there traced upon the ground, and that the 
passers-by stopped to read it. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


lOI 


II. 

THE UNKNOWN UNFOLDS ITSELF BY DEGREES. 

On the other hand, Gilliatt had the satisfaction of seeing 
the Brav^es every day- By some accident he was con- 
tinually passing that way. His business seemed always 
to lead him by the path which passed under the wall of 
D4ruchette’s garden. 

One morning, as he was walking along this path, he 
heard a market-woman who was returning from the 
Brav4es say to another, “ Mess Lethierry is fond of 
sea-kale.” 

He dug in his garden of the Bu de la Rue a trench for 
sea-kale. The sea-kale is a vegetable which has a flavour 
like asparagus. 

The wall of the garden of the Brav^es was very low ; 
it would have been easy to scale it. The idea of scaling 
it would have appeared, to him, terrible. But there 
was nothing to hinder his hearing, as any one else might, 
the voices of persons talking as he passed, in the rooms 
or in the garden. He did not listen, but he heard them. 
Once he could distinguish the voices of the two servants, 
Grace and Douce, disputing. It was a sound which 
belonged to the house, and their quarrel remained in his 
ears like a remembrance of music. 

On another occasion he distinguished a voice which 
was different, and which seemed to him to be the voice 
of D4ruchette. He quickened his pace, and was soon 
out of hearing. 

The words uttered by that voice, however, remained 
fixed in his memory. He repeated them at every in- 
stant. They were, “ Will you please give me the little 
broom ? ” 


102 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


By degrees he became bolder. He had the daring to 
stay awhile. One day it happened that D4nichette was 
singing at her piano, altogether invisible from without, 
although her window was open. The air was that of 
“Bonnie Dundee.” He grew pale, but he screwed his 
courage to the point of listening. 

Springtide came. One day Gilliatt enjoyed a beatific 
vision. The heavens were opened, and there, before his 
eyes, appeared D6ruchette, watering lettuces in her little 
garden. 

Soon afterwards he took to doing more than merely 
listening there. He watched her habits, observed her 
hours, and waited to catch a glimpse of her. 

In all this he was very careful not to be seen. 

The year advanced ; the time came when the trellises 
were heavy with roses, and haunted by the butterflies. 
By little and little he had come to conceal himself for 
hours behind her wall, motionless and silent, seen by no 
one, and holding his breath as D^ruchette passed in and 
out of her garden. Men grow accustomed to poison by 
degrees. 

From his hiding-place he could often hear the sound 
of D^ruchette conversing with Mess Lethierry under a 
thick arch of leaves, in a spot where there was a garden- 
seat. The words came distinctly to his ears. 

What a change had come over him I He had even 
descended to watch and listen. Alas ! there is some- 
thing of the character of a spy in every human heart. 

There was another garden-seat visible to him, and 
nearer. D4ruchette would sit there sometimes. 

From the flowers that he had observed her gathering 
he had guessed her taste in the matter of perfumes. 
The scent of the bindweed was her favourite ; then the 
pink ; then the honeysuckle ; then the jasmine. The 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


103 

rose stood only fifth in the scale. She looked at the 
lilies, but did not smell them. 

Gilliatt figured her in his imagination from this choice 
of odours. With each perfume he associated some per- 
fection. 

The very idea of speaking to D^ruchette would have 
made his hair stand on end. A poor old rag-picker, 
whose wandering brought her, from time to time, into 
the httle road leading under the enclosure of the Brav^es, 
had occcLsionally remarked Gilliatt’s assiduity beside the 
wall, and his devotion for this retired spot. Did she 
connect the presence of a man before this wall with the 
possibility of a woman behind it ? Did she perceive 
that vague, invisible thread ? Was she, in her decrepit 
mendicancy, still youthful enough to remember some- 
thing of the old happier days ? And could she, in this 
dark night and winter of her wretched life,, still recog- 
nize the dawn ? We know not ; but it appears that, on 
one occasion, psissing near Gilliatt at his post, she brought 
to bear upon him something as like a smile as she was 
capable of, and muttered between her teeth, “It is 
getting warmer.” 

Gilliatt heard the words, and was struck by them. 
“ It warms one,” he muttered, with an inward note of 
interrogation. “It is getting warmer.” What did the 
old woman mean ? 

He repeated the phrase mechanically aU day, but he 
could not guess its meaning. 


104 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


III. 

THE AIR “ BONNIE DUNDEE ” FINDS AN ECHO ON 
THE HILL. 

It was in a spot behind the enclosure of the garden of 
the Brav6es, at an angle of the wall, half concealed with 
holly and ivy, and covered with nettles, wild mallow, 
and large white mullen growing between the blocks of 
stone, that he passed the greater part of that summer. 
He watched there, lost in deep thought. The lizards 
grew accustomed to his presence, and basked in the 
sun among the same stones. The summer was bright 
and full of dreamy indolence : overhead the light clouds 
came and went. Gilliatt sat upon the grass. The air 
was full of the songs of birds. He held his two hands 
up to his forehead, sometimes trying to recollect him- 
self : Why should she write my name in the snow ? ” 
From a distance the sea breeze came up in gentle breaths ; 
at intervals the horn of the quarrymen sounded abruptly, 
warning the passers-by to take shelter, as they shattered 
some mass with gunpowder. The Port of St. Sampson 
was not visible from this place, but he could se#^ the 
tips of masts above the trees. The seagulls flew wide 
and afar. Gilliatt had heard his mother say that women 
could love men ; that such things happened sometimes. 
He remembered it, and said within himself, “ Who 
knows, may not Deruchette love me ? ” Then a feeling' 
of sadness would come upon him ; he would say, ‘‘ She, 
too, thinks of me in her turn. It is well.*^ He remem- 
bered that Deruchette was rich, and that he was poor : 
and then the new boat appeared to him an execrable 
invention. He could never remember what day of the 
month it was. He would stare listlessly at the great 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


105 


bees, with their yellow bodies and their short wings, as 
they entered with a buzzing noise into the holes in the 
wall. 

One evening D4nichette went indoors to retire to 
bed. She approached her window to close it. The night 
was dark. Suddenly something caught her ear, and she 
listened. Somewhere in the darkness there was a sound 
of music. It was some one, perhaps, on the hillside, or 
at the foot of the towers of Vale Castle, or, perhaps, 
farther still, playing an air upon some instrument. 
D6ruchette recognized her favouritp melody, “ Bonnie 
Dundee, played upon the bagpipe. She thought little 
of it. 

From that night the music might be heard again from 
time to time at the same hours, particularly when the 
nights were very dark. 

Deruchette was not much pleased with all this. 


IV. 


** A serenade by night may please a lady fair, 

But of uncle and of guardian let the troubadour beware.” 

Unpublished Comedy. 

Four years passed away. 

Deruchette was approaching her twenty-first year, and 
was still unmarried. Some writer has said that a fixed 
idea is a sort of gimlet ; every year gives it another 
turn. To pull it out the first year is like plucking out 
the hair by the roots ; in the second year, like tearing 
the skin ; in the third, like breaking the bones ; and in 
the. fourth, like removing the very brain itself. 

Gilliatt had arrived at this fourth stage. 

He had never yet spoken a word to Deruchette. He 


io6 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

lived and dreamed near that delightful vision. This 
was all. 

It happened one day that, finding himself by chance 
at St. Sampson, he had seen Deruchette talking with 
Mess Lethierry at the door of the Bravees, which opens 
upon the roadway of the port. Gilliatt ventured to 
approach very near. He fancied that at the very 
moment of his passing she had smiled. There was 
nothing impossible in that. 

D4ruchette still heard, from time to time, the sound 
of the bagpipe. 

Mess Lethierry had also heard this bagpipe. By 
degrees he had come to remark this persevering musician 
under Deruchette’s window. A tender strain, too ; all 
the more suspicious. A nocturnal gallant was a thing 
not to his taste. His wish was to marry Deruchette in 
his own time, when she was willing and he was willing, 
purely and simply, without any romance or music or 
anything of that sort. Irritated at it, he had at last 
kept a watch, and he fancied that he had detected 
Gilliatt. He passed his fingers through his beard — a 
sign of anger — and grumbled out, “ What has that 
fellow got to pipe about ? He is in love with D6ru- 
chette, that is clear. You waste your time, young man. 
Any one who wants Deruchette must come to me, and 
not loiter about playing the flute.” 

An event of importance, long foreseen, occurred soon 
afterwards. It was announced that the Reverend 
J aquemin Herode was appointed surrogate of the Bishop 
of Winchester, dean of the island, and rector of St. 
Peter’s Port, and that he would leave St. Sampson for 
St. Peter’s immediately after his successor should be 
installed. 

It could not be long to the arrival of the new rector. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 107 

He was a gentleman of Norman extraction. Monsieur 
Ebenezer Caudray, 

Some facts were known about the new rector, which 
the benevolent and malevolent interpreted in a contrary 
sense. He was known to be young and poor, but his 
youth was tempered with much learning, and his poverty 
by good expectations. In the dialect specially invented 
for the subject of riches and inheritances, death goes by 
the name of '' expectations.'' He was the nephew and 
heir of the aged and opulent Dean of St. Asaph. At the 
death of this old gentleman he would be a rich man. 
M. Caudray had distinguished relations. He was almost 
entitled to the quality of Honourable." As regarded 
his doctrine, people judged differently. He was an 
Anglican, but, ' according to the expression of Bishop 
Tillotson, a “ libertine "-—that is, in reality, one who 
was very severe. He repudiated all Pharisaism. He 
was a friend rather of the Presbytery than the Episco- 
pacy. He dreamed of the Primitive Church of the days 
when even Adam had the right to choose his Eve, and 
when Frumentinus, Bishop of Hierapohs, carried off a 
young maiden to make her his wife, and said to her 
parents, ** Her will is such, and such is mine. You are 
no longer her mother, and you are no longer her father. 
I am the Bishop of Hierapohs, and this is my wife. Her 
father is in heaven." If the common belief could be 
trusted, M. Caudray subordinated the text, “ Honour thy 
father and thy mother," to that other text, in his eyes 
of higher significance, “ The woman is the flesh of the 
man. She shall leave her father and mother to follow her 
husband ’’ This tendency, however, to circumscribe the 
parental authority and to favour religiously every mode of 
forming the conjugal tie is peculiar to all Protestantism, 
particularly in England, and singularly so in America. 


io8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


V. 

A DESERVED SUCCESS HAS ALWAYS ITS DETRACTORS. 

At this period the affairs of Mess Lethierry were in this 
position : — The Durande had well fulfilled all his expecta- 
tions. He had paid his debts, repaired his misfortunes, 
discharged his obligations at Breme, met his acceptances 
at St. Malo. He had paid off the mortgage upon his 
house at the Brav6es, and had bought up all the little 
local rent-charges upon the property. He was also the 
proprietor of a great productive capital. This was the 
Durande herself. The net revenue from the boat was 
about a thousand pounds sterling per annum, and the 
traffic was constantly increasing. Strictly speaking, the 
Durande constituted his entire fortune. She was also 
the fortune of the island. The carriage of cattle being 
one of the most profitable portions of her trade, he had 
been obliged, in order to facilitate the stowage, and the 
embarking and disembarking of animals, to do away 
with the luggage-boxes and the two boats. It was, 
perhaps, imprudent. The Durande had but one boat — 
namely, her long-boat ; but this was an excellent one. 

Ten years had elapsed since Rantaine’s robbery. 

This prosperity of the Durande had its weak point. 
It inspired no /Confidence. People regarded it as a risk. 
Lethierry’s good fortune was looked upon as exceptional. 
He was considered to have gained by a lucky rashness. 
Some one in the Isle of Wight who had imitated him 
had not succeeded. The enterprise had ruined the share- 
holders. The engines, in fact, were badly constructed. 
But people shook their heads. Innovations have always 
to contend with the difficulty that few wish them well. 
The least false step compromises them. » 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 109 

One of the commercial oracles of the Channel Islands, 
a certain banker from Paris, named Jauge, being con- 
sulted upon a steamboat speculation, was reported to 
have turned his back, with the remark, ‘‘ An investment 
is it you propose to me ? Exactly — an investment in 
smoke. 

On the other hand, the sailing-vessels had no difficulty 
in finding capitalists to take shares in a venture. Capital, 
in fact, was obstinately in favour of sails, and as obsti- 
nately against boilers and paddle-wheels. At Guernsey 
the Durande was indeed a fact, but steam was not yet 
an established principle. Such is the fanatical spirit of 
conservatism in opposition to progress. They said of 
Lethierry, “ It is all very well ; but he could not do it 
a second time.^* Far from encouraging, his example 
inspired timidity. Nobody would have dared to risk 
another Durande. 


VI. 

THE SLOOP '' CASHMERE ’’ SAVES A SHIPWRECKED CREW. 

The equinoctial gales begin early in the Channel. The 
sea there is narrow, and the winds disturb it easily. 
The westerly gales begin from the month of February, 
and the waves are beaten about from every quarter. 
Navigation becomes an anxious matter. The people on 
the coasts look to the signal-post, and begin to watch 
for vessels in distress. The sea is then like a cutthroat 
in ambush for his victim. An invisible trumpet sounds 
the alarm of war with the elements, furious blasts spring 
up from the horizon, and a terrible wind soon begins to 
blow. The dark night whistles and howls. In the depth 


no 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


of the clouds the black tempest distends its cheeks, and 
the storm arises. 

The wind is one danger ; the fogs are another. 

Fogs have from all time been the terror of mariners. 
In certain fogs microscopic prisms of ice are found in 
suspension, to which Mariotte attributes halos, mock 
suns, and paraselenes. Storm-fogs are of a composite 
character : various gases of unequal specific gravity 
combine with the vapour of water, and arrange them- 
selves, layer over layer, in an order which divides the 
dense mist into zones. Below ranges the iodine ; above 
the iodine is the sulphur ; above the sulphur the brome ; 
above the brome the phosphorus. This, in a certain 
manner, and making allowance for electric and magnetic 
tension, explains several phenomena, as the St. Elmo’s 
Fire of Columbus and Magellan, the flying stars moving 
about the ships, of which Seneca speaks ; the two flames. 
Castor and Pollux, mentioned by Plutarch ; the Roman 
legion, whose spears appeared to Caesar to take fire ; the 
peak of the Chateau of Duino in Friuli, which the sentinel 
made to sparkle by touching it with his lance ; and 
perhaps even those fulgurations from the earth which 
the ancients called Satan’s terrestrial lightnings. At 
the equator an immense mist seems permanently to 
encircle the globe. It is known as the cloud-ring. The 
function of the cloud-ring is to temper the heat of the 
tropics, as that of the Gulf Stream is to mitigate the 
coldness of the Pole. Under the cloud-ring fogs are 
fatal. These are what are called horse latitudes. It was 
here that navigators of bygone ages were accustomed to 
cast their horses into the sea to lighten the ship in stormy 
weather, and to economize the fresh water when be- 
calmed. Columbus said, “ Nuhe ahaxo ex muerte'' death 
lurks in the low cloud. The Etruscans, who bear the 


Ill 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

same relation to meteorology which the Chaldeans did 
to astronomy, had two high priests — the high priest of 
the thunder, and the high priest of the clouds. The 
“ fulgurators ” observed the lightning, and the weather 
sages watched the mists. The college of Priest-Augurs 
was consulted by the Syrians, the Phoenicians, the Pelasgi, 
and all the primitive navigators of the ancient Mare 
Internum. The origin of tempests was, from that time 
forward, partially understood. It is intimately con- 
nected with the generation of fogs, and is, properly 
speaking, the same phenomenon. There exist upon the 
ocean three regions of fogs, one equatorial and two polar. 
The mariners give them but one name, the pUch~pot, 

In all latitudes, and particularly in the Channel, the 
equinoctial fogs are dangerous. They shed a sudden 
darkness over the sea. One of the perils of fogs, even 
when not very dense, arises from their preventing the 
mariners perceiving the change of the bed of the sea by 
the variations of the colour of the water. The result 
is a dangerous concealment of the approach of sands 
and breakers. The vessel steers towards the shoals- 
without receiving any warning. Frequently the fogs 
leave a ship no resource except to lie-to or to cast 
anchor. There are as many shipwrecks from the fogs 
as from the winds. 

After a very violent squall succeeding one of these 
foggy days, the mail-boat Cashmere arrived safely from 
England. It entered at St. Peter’s Port as the first 
gleam of day appeared upon the sea, and at the very 
moment when the cannon of Castle Comet announced 
the break of day. The sky had cleared : the sloop 
Cashmere was anxiously expected, as she was to bring 
the new rector of St. Sampson. 

A little after the arrival of the sloop a ramour ran 


II2 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


through the town that she had been hailed during the 
night at sea by a long-boat containing a shipwrecked 
crew. 


VII. 

HOW AN IDLER HAD THE GOOD FORTUNE TO BE SEEN BY 
A FISHERMAN. 

On that very night, at the moment when the wind abated, 
Gilliatt had gone out with his nets — without, however, 
taking his famous old Dutch boat too far from the coast. 

As he was returning with the rising tide, towards two 
o’clock in the afternoon, the sun was shining brightly, 
and he passed before the Beast’s Horn to reach the 
little bay of the Bu de la Rue. At that moment he 
fancied that he saw, in the projection of the “ Gild- 
Holm-’Ur” seat a shadow, which was not that of the 
rock. He steered his vessel nearer, and was able to 
perceive a man sitting in the “ Gild-Holm-’Ur.” The 
sea was already very high, the rock encircled by the 
waves, and escape entirely cut off. Gilliatt made signs 
to the man. The stranger remained motionless. Gilliatt 
drew nearer : the man was asleep. 

He was attired in black. “ He looks like a priest,” 
thought Gilliatt. He approached still nearer, and could 
distinguish the face of a young man. 

The features were unknown to him. 

The rock, happily, was peaked ; there was a good 
depth. Gilliatt wore off, and succeeded in skirting the 
rocky wall. The tide raised the bark so high that Gilliatt, 
by standing upon the gunwale of the sloop, could touch the 
man’s feet. He raised himself upon the planking, and 
stretched out his hands. If he had fallen at that moment, 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


113 

it is doubtful if he would have risen again on the water : 
the waves were rolling in between the boat and the rock, 
and destruction would have been inevitable. He pulled 
the foot of the sleeping man. “ Ho ! there. What are 
you doing in this place ? ” 

The man aroused, and muttered, — 

“ I was looking about.” 

He was now completely awake, and continued, — 

‘‘ I have just arrived in this part. I came this way on 
a pleasure trip. I have passed the night on the sea : 
the view from here seemed beautiful. I was weary, and 
fell asleep.” 

“Ten minutes later, and you would have been 
drowned.” 

“ Ha ! ” 

“ Jump into my bark.” 

Gilhatt kept the bark fast with his foot, clutched the 
rock with one hand, and stretched out the other to the 
stranger in black, who sprang quickly into the boat. He 
was a fine young man. 

Gilliatt seized the tiller, and in two minutes his boat 
entered the bay of the Bu de la Rue. 

The young man wore a round hat and a white cravat ; 
and his long black frock coat was buttoned up to the neck. 
He had fair hair, which he wore en couronne. He had a 
somewhat feminine cast of features, a clear eye, a grave 
manner. 

^leanwhile the boat had touched the ground. Gilhatt 
passed the cable through the mooring-ring, then turned 
and perceived the young man holding out a sovereign in 
a very white hand. 

Gilhatt moved the hand gently away. 

There was a pause. The young man was the first to 
break the silence. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


114 

“You have saved me from death.” 

“ Perhaps,” replied Gilliatt. 

The moorings were made fast, and they went ashore. 

The stranger continued, — 

“ I owe you my Hfe, sir.” 

“No matter.” 

This reply from Gilliatt was again followed by a pause. 

“ Do you belong to this parish ? ” 

“ No,” replied Gilliatt. 

“ To what parish, then ? ” 

Gilliatt lifted up his right hand, pointed to the sky, 
and said, — 

“ To that yonder.” 

The young man bowed, and left him. 

After walking a few paces, the stranger stopped, felt 
in his pocket, drew out a book, and returning towards 
Gilhatt, offered it to him. 

“ Permit me to make you a present of this.” 

Gilliatt took the volume. 

It was a Bible. 

An instant after, Gilhatt, leaning upon the parapet, 
was following the young man with his eyes as he turned 
the angle of the path which led to St. Sampson. 

By little and little he lowered his gaze, forgot all about 
the stranger — knew no more whether the “ Gild-Holm- 
'Ur ” existed. Everything disappeared before him in 
the bottomless depth of a reverie. 

There was one abyss which swallowed up all his 
thoughts. This was D^ruchette. 

A voice calling him aroused him from this dream. 

“ Ho there, Gilliatt ! ” 

He recognized the voice and looked up. 

“ What is the matter, Sieur Landoys ? ” 

It was, in fact, Sieur Landoys, who was passing along 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the road about one hundred paces from the Bh de la 
Rue in his phaeton, drawn by one little horse. He had 
stopped to hail GiUiatt, but he seemed hurried. 

“ There is news, Gilliatt.” 

“ Where is that ? ” 

“ At the Bravees.” 

“ What is it ? ” 

“ I am too far off to tell you the story.” 

GilUatt shuddered. 

“ Is Miss Deruchette going to be married ? ” 

“ No ; but she had better look out for a husband.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

Go up to the house, and you will learn.” 

And Sieur Landoys whipped on his horse. 


BOOK V.— THE REVOLVER. 


I. 

CONVERSATIONS AT THE JEAN AUBERGE. 

SiEUR Clubin was a man who bided his time. He was 
short in stature, and his complexion was yellow. He 
had the strength of a bull. His sea Hfe had not tanned 
his skin ; his flesh had a sallow hue ; it was the colour 
of a wax candle, of which his eyes, too, had something 
of the steady light. His memory was peculiarly reten- 
tive. With him, to have seen a man once was to have 
him like a note in a notebook. His quiet glance took 
possession of you. The pupil of his eye received the 
impression of a face, and kept it hke a portrait. The 
face might grow old, but Sieur Clubin never lost it ; it 
was impossible to cheat that tenacious memory. Sieur 
Clubin was curt in speech, grave in manner, bold in 
action. No gestures were ever indulged in by him. 
An air of candour won everybody to him at first ; many 
people thought him artless. He had a wrinkle in the 
comer of his eye, astonishingly expressive of simplicity. 
As we have said, no abler mariner existed : no one like 
him for reefing a sail, for keeping a vessel’s head to the 
wind or the sails well set. Never did reputation for 
religion and integrity stand higher than his. To have 
suspected him would have been to bring yourself under 


THE TOILEkS OF THE SEA. 117 

suspicion. He was on terms of intimacy with Monsieur 
R^buchet, a money-changer at St. Malo, who Hved in 
the Rue St. Vincent, next door to the armourer’s ; and 
Monsieur R^buchet would say, “ I would leave my shop 
in Clubin’s hands.” 

Sieur Clubin was a widower ; his wife, like himself, 
had enjoyed a high reputation for probity. She had 
died with a fame for incorruptible virtue. If the baiUi 
had whispered gallant things in her ear, she would have 
impeached him before the king. If a saint had made 
love to her, she would have told it to the priest. This 
couple, Sieur and Dame Clubin, had realized in Torteval 
the ideal of the English epithet ” respectable.” Dame 
Clubin’s reputation was as the snowy whiteness of the 
swan ; Sieur Clubin’s Uke that of ermine itself — a spot 
would have been fatal to him. He could hardly have 
picked up a pin without making inquiries for the owner. 
He would send round the town-crier about a box of 
matches. One day he went into a wineshop at St. 
Servan, and said to the man who kept it, ” Three years 
ago I breakfasted here ; you made a mi^ake in the 
bill,” and he returned the man thirteen sous. He was 
the very personification of probity, with a certain com- 
pression of the lips indicative of watchfulness. 

He seemed, indeed, always on the watch — for what > 
For rogues, probably. 

Every Tuesday he commanded the Durande on her 
passage from Guernsey to St. Malo. He arrived at St. 
Malo on the Tuesday evening, stayed two days there to 
discharge and take in a new cargo, and started again for 
Guernsey on Friday morning. 

There was at that period, at St. Malo, a little tavern 
near the harbour, which was called the ” Jean Auberge.” 

The construction of the modem quays swept away this 
house. At this period the sea came up as far as the 
St. Vincent and Dinan gates. St, Merlan and St. Servan 
communicated with each other by covered carts and 
other vehicles, which passed to and fro among the 


ii8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


vessels lying high and dry, avoiding the buoys, the 
anchors, and cables, and running the risk now and then 
of smashing their leathern hoods against the lowered 
yards or the end of a jibboom. Between the tides 
the coachmen drove their horses over those sands, where, 
six hours afterwards, the winds would be beating the 
rolling waves. The four-and-twenty carrying dogs of 
St. Malo, who tore to pieces a naval officer in 1770, were 
accustomed to prowl about this beach. This excess of 
zeal on their part led to the destruction of the pack. 
Their nocturnal barkings are no longer heard between 
the little and the great Talar d. 

Sieur Clubin was accustomed to stay at the Jean 
Auberge. The French office of the Durande was held 
there. 

The custom-house officers and coastguardmen came to 
take their meals and to drink at the Jean Auberge. 
They had their separate tables. The custom-house 
officers of Binic found it convenient for the service to 
meet there with their brother officers of St. Malo. 

Captains of vessels came there also ; but they ate -at 
another table. 

Sieur Clubin sat sometimes at one, sometimes at the 
other table, but preferred the table of the custom-house 
men to that of the sea-captains. He was always welcome 
at either. 

The tables were well served. There were strange 
drinks specially provided for foreign sailors. A dandy 
sailor from Bilbao could have been supplied there with 
a helada. People drank stout there, as at Greenwich ; 
or brown gueuse, as at Antwerp. 

Masters of vessels who came from long voyages and 
privateersmen sometimes appeared at the captains’ 
table, where they exchanged news. “ How are sugars ? 
That commission is only for small lots. — The brown 
kinds, however, are going off. Three thousand bags of 
East India, and five hundred hogsheads of Sagua. — 
Take my word, the opposition will end by defeating 


THE TOILEks OF THE SEA. 119 

^’’illele. — ^What about indigo ? Only seven serons ot 
Guatemala changed hands. — ^The Nanine- Julia is in 
the roads ; a pretty three-master from Brittany. — ^The 
two cities of La Plata are at loggerheads again. — ^When 
Monte Video gets fat, Buenos Ayres grows lean. — It has 
been found necessary to transfer the cargo of the Regina- 
Cceli, which has been condemned at Callao. — Cocoas go 
off briskly. — Caraque bags are quoted at one hundred 
and thirty-four, and Trinidads at seventy -three. — It 
appears that at the review in the Champ de Mars the 
people cried, “ Down with the ministers ! ” — The raw 
salt Saladeros hides are selling — ox-hides at sixty francs, 
and cows at forty-eight. — Have they passed the Balkan ? 
— What is Diebitsch about ? — Aniseed is in demand at 
San Francisco. Plagniol olive oil is quiet. — Gruyere 
cheese, in bulk, is thirty-two francs the quintal. — Well, 
is Leon XII. dead ? ” etc., etc. 

AU these things were talked about and commented on 
aloud. At the table of the custom-house and coast- 
guard officers they spoke in a lower key. 

Matters of police and revenue on the coast and in the 
ports require, in fact, a little more privacy, and a little 
less clearness in the conversation. 

The sea-captains’ table was presided over by an old 
captain of a large vessel, M. Gerfrais-Gaboureau. M. 
Gertrais-Gaboureau could hardly be regarded as a man ; 
he was rather a hving barometer. His long life at sea 
had given him a surprising power of prognosticating the 
state of the weather. He seemed to issue a decree for 
the weather to-morrow. He sounded the winds, and 
felt the pulse, as it were, of the tides. He might be 
imagined requesting the clouds to show their tongue — 
that is to say, their forked lightnings. He was the 
physician of the wave, the breeze, and the squall. The 
ocean was his patient. He had travelled round the world 
like a doctor going his visits, examining every kind of 
climate in its good and bad condition. He was pro- 
foundly versed in the pathology of the seasons. Some- 


120 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


times he would be heard delivering himself in this fashion : 

The barometer descended in 1796 to three degrees 
below tempest point/' He was a sailor from real love 
of the sea. He hated England as much as he liked the 
ocean. He had carefully studied English seamanship, 
and considered himself to have discovered its we^ 
point. He would explain how the Sovereign of 1637 
differed from the Royal William of 1670, and from the 
Victory of I775» He compared their build as to their 
forecastles and quarter-decks. He looked back with 
regret to the towers upon the deck, and the funnel- 
shaped tops of the Great Harry of 1514 — probably re- 
garding them from the point of view of convenient 
lodging-places for French cannon-balls. In his eyes, 
nations only existed for their naval institutions. He 
indulged in some odd figures of speech on this subject. 
He considered the term “ The Trinity House '' as suffi- 
ciently indicating England. The “ Northern Commis- 
sioners ” were in like manner synonymous in his mind 
with Scotland ; the “ Ballast Board,” with Ireland. 
He was full of nautical information. He was, in himself, 
a marine n phabet and almanac, a tariff and low-water 
mark, all combined. He knew by heart all the light- 
house dues — particularly those of the English coast — 
one penny per ton for passing before this ; one farthing 
before that. He would tell you that the Small Rock 
Light, which once used to burn two hundred gallons of 
oil, now consumes fifteen hundred. Once, aboard ship, 
he was attacked by a dangerous disease, and was be- 
lieved to be dying. The crew assembled round his ham- 
mock, and in the midst of his groans and agony he 
addressed the chief carpenter with the words, You had 
better make a mortise in each side of the main caps, and 
put in a bit of iron to help pass the top ropes through.” 
His habit of command had given to his countenance an 
expression of authority. 

It was rare that the subjects of conversation at the 
captains' table and at that of the custom-house men 


" THE TOILEKS OF THE SEA. 121 

were the same. This, however, did happen to be the 
case in the first days of that month of February to which 
the course of this history has now brought us. The 
three-master Tamaulipas, Captain Zuela, arrived from 
Chili, and bound thither again, was the theme of dis- 
cussion at both tables. 

At the captains’ table they were talking of her cargo, 
and at that of the custom-house people of certain cir- 
cumstances connected with her recent proceedings. 

Captain Zuela of Copiapo was partly a Chihan and 
partly a Columbian. He had taken a part in the War 
of Independence in a true independent fashion, adhering 
sometimes to Bolivar, sometimes to Morillo, according as 
he had found it to his interest. He had enriched himself 
by serving all causes. No man in the world could have 
been more Bourbonist, more Bonapartist, more absolu- 
tist, more liberal, more atheistical, or more devoutly 
Catholic. He belonged to that great and renowned 
party which may be called the Lucrative Party. From 
time to time he made his appearance in France on com- 
mercial voyages ; and if report spoke truly, he willingly 
gave a passage to fugitives of any kind — bankrupts or 
political refugees, it was all the same to him, provided 
they could pay. His mode of taking them aboard was 
simple. The fugitive waited upon a lonely point of the 
coast, and at the moment of setting sail Zuela would 
detach a small boat to fetch him. On his last voyage 
he had assisted in this way an outlaw and fugitive from 
justice named Berton ; and on this occasion he was 
suspected of being about to aid the flight of the men 
implicated in the affair of the Bidassoa. The police were 
informed, and had their eye upon him. 

This period was an epoch of flights and escapes. The 
Restoration in France was a reactionary movement. 
Revolutions are fruitful of voluntary exile, and res- 
torations of wholesale banishments. During the first 
seven or eight years which followed the return of the 
Bourbons panic was universal: in finance, in industry. 


122 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


in commerce, men felt the ground tremble beneath them. 
Bankruptcies were numerous in the commercial world ; 
in the political there was a general rush to escape. 
Lavalette had taken flight, Lefebvre Desnouettes had 
taken flight, Delon had taken flight. Special tribunals 
were again in fashion — 'plus Treetaillon. People in- 
stinctively shunned the Pont de Saumur, the esplanade 
de la Reole, the wall of the Observatoire in Paris,, the 
tower of Taurias d’ Avignon — dismal landmarks in his- 
tory where the period of reaction has left its sign-spots, 
on which the marks of that blood-stained hand are still 
visible. In London the Thistlewood affair, with its rami- 
fications in France ; in Paris the Trogoff trial, with its 
ramifications in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy, had 
increased the motives for anxiety and flight, and given 
an impetus to that mysterious rout which left so many 
gaps in the social system of that day. To find a place 
of safety, this was the general care. To be implicated 
was to be ruined. The spirit of the military tribunals 
had survived their institution. Sentences were matters 
of favour. People fled to Texas, to the Rocky Moun- 
tains, to Peru, to Mexico. The men of the Loire, traitors 
then, but now regarded as patriots, had founded the 
Champ d*Asile, Beranger in one of his songs says, — 

“ Barbarians 1 we are Frenchmen born ; 

Pity us, glorious, yet forlorn.” 

Self-banishment was the only resource left. Nothing, 
perhaps, seems simpler than flight, but that mono- 
syllable has a terrible significance. Every obstacle is in 
the way of the man who slips away. Taking to flight 
necessitates disguise. Persons of importance — even il- 
lustrious characters — ^were reduced to these expedients, 
only fit for malefactors. Their independent habits 
rendered it difficult for them to escape through the 
meshes of authority. A rogue who violates the con- 
ditions of his ticket-oi-leave comports himself before 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


123 


the police as innocently as a saint ; but imagine inno- 
cence constrained to act a part — virtue disguising its 
voice — a glorious reputation hiding under a mask. 
Yonder passer-by is a man of weU-earned celebrity; he 
is in quest of a false passport. The equivocal proceed- 
ings of one absconding from the reach of the law is no 
proof that he is not a hero. Ephemeral but character- 
istic features of the time of which our so-called regular 
history takes no note, but which the true painter of the 
age will bring out into relief. Under cover of these 
flights and concealments of honest men, genuine rogues, 
less watched and suspected, managed often to get clear 
off. A scoundrel, who found it convenient to disappear, 
would take advantage of the general pell-mell, tack him- 
self on to the pohtical refugees, and, thanks to his greater 
skill in the art, would .contrive to appear in that dim 
twilight more honest even than his honest neighbours. 
Nothing looks more awkward and confused sometimes 
than honesty unjustly condemned. It is out of its 
element, and is almost sure to commit itself. 

It is a curious fact that this voluntary expatriation, 
particularly with honest folks, appeared to lead to every 
strange turn of fortune. The modicum of civilization 
which a scamp brought with him from London or Paris 
became, perhaps, a valuable stock-in-trade in some 
primitive country, ingratiated him with the people, and 
enabled him to strike into new paths. There is nothing 
impossible in a man's escaping thus from the laws, to 
reappear elsewhere as a dignitary among the priesthood. 
There was something phantasmagorial in these sudden 
disappearances ; and more than one such flight has led 
to events like the marvels of a dream. An escapade of 
this kind, indeed, seemed to end naturally in the wild 
and wonderful ; as when some broken bankrupt suddenly 
decamps to turn up again twenty years later as Grand 
Vizier to the Mogul, or as a king in Tasmania. 

Rendering assistance to these fugitives was an estab- 
lished trade, and, looking to the abundance of business 


124 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


of that kind, was a highly profitable one. It was gener- 
ally carried on as a supplementary branch of certain 
recognized kinds of commerce. A person, for instance, 
desiring to escape to England, applied to the smugglers ; 
one who desired to get to America, had recourse to sea- 
captains like Zuela. 


II. 

CLUBIN OBSERVES SOME ONE. 

Zuela came sometimes to take refreshment at the Jean 
Auberge. Clubin knew him by sight. 

For that matter Clubin was not proud. He did not 
disdain even to know scamps by sight. He went so far 
sometimes as to cultivate even a closer acquaintance 
with them — giving his hand in the open street, or saying 
good-day to them He talked English with the smug- 
glers, and jabbered Spanish with the contrebandistas. 
On this subject he had at command a number of apolo- 
getic phrases. “ Good/' he said, “ can be extracted out 
of the knowledge of evil. The gamekeeper may find 
advantage in knowing the poacher. The good pilot may 
sound the depths of a pirate, who is only a sort of hidden 
rock. I test the quality of a scoundrel as a doctor will 
test a poison.” There was no answering a battery of 
proverbs Uke this. Everybody gave Clubin credit for 
his shrewdness. People praised him for not indulging in 
a ridiculous delicacy. Who, then, should dare to speak 
scandal of him on this point ? Everything he did was 
evidently for the good of the service.” With him all 
was straightforward. Nothing could stain his good 
fame. Crystal might more easily become sullied. This 
general confidence in him was the natural reward of a 
long life of integrity, the crowning advantage of a settled 
reputation. Whatever Clubin might do, or appear to 
do, was sure to be interpreted favourably. He had 


125 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

attained almost to a state of impeccability. Over and 
above this, “ he is very wary,” people said ; and from a 
situation which in others would have given rise to sus- 
picion, his integrity would extricate itsdf, with a still 
greater halo of reputation for ability. This reputation 
for abihty mingled harmoniously with his fame for per- 
fect simplicity of character. Great simplicity and great 
talents in conjunction are not uncommon. The com- 
pound constitutes one of the varieties of the virtuous 
man, and one of the most valuable. Sieur Clubin was 
one of those men who might be found in intimate conver- 
sation with a sharper or a thief, without suffering any 
diminution of respect in the minds of their neighbours. 

The Tamaulipas had completed her loading. She was 
ready for sea, and was preparing to sail very shortly. 

One Tuesday evening the Durande arrived at St. Malo 
while it was still broad daylight. Sieur Clubin, standing 
upon the bridge of the vessel, and superintending the 
manoeuvres necessary for getting her into port, per- 
ceived upon the sandy beach, near the Petit-Bey, two 
men, who were conversing between the rocks in a soh- 
tary spot. He observed them with his sea-glass, and 
recognized one of the men. It was Captain Zuela. He 
seemed to recognize the other also. 

This other was a person of high stature, a little gray. 
He wore the broad-brimmed hat and the sober clothing 
of the Society of Friends. He was probably a Quaker. 
He lowered his gaze with an air of extreme diffidence. 

On arriving at the Jean Auberge, Sieur Clubin learnt 
that the Tamaulipas was preparing to sail in about ten 
days. 

It has since become known that he obtained informa- 
tion on some other points. 

That night he entered the gunsmith’s shop in the 
St. Vincent Street, and said to thh master, — 

“ Do you know what a revolver is ? ” 

“Yes,” replied the gunsmith. “It is an American 
weapon.’’ 


126 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

“It is a pistol with which a man can carry on a con- 
versation.” 

“ Exactly : an instrument which comprises in itself 
both the question and the answer.” 

“ And the rejoinder too.” 

“ Precisely, Monsieur Clubin. A rotatory clump of 
barrels.” 

“ I shall want five or six balls.” 

The gunmaker twisted the corner of his lip, and made 
that peculiar noise with which, when accompanied by a 
toss of the head, Frenchmen express admiration. 

“ The weapon is a good one, Monsieur Clubin.” 

“ I want a revolver with six barrels.” 

“ I have not one.” 

“ What ! and you a gunmaker ! ” 

“ I do not keep such articles yet. You see, it is a 
new thing. It is only just coming into vogue. French 
makers, as yet, confine themselves to the simple 
pistol.” 

“ Nonsense.” 

“ It has not yet become an article of commerce.” 

“ Nonsense, I say.” 

“ I have excellent pistols.” 

“ I want a revolver.” 

“ I agree that it is more useful. Stop, Monsieur 
Clubin ! ” 

“ What ? ” 

“ I believe I know where there is one at this moment 
in St. Malo ; to be had a bargain.” 

“ A revolver ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ For'sale ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Where is that ? ” 

“ I beheve I know ; ’or I can find out.” 

“ When can you give me an answer ? ” 

“ A bargain ; but of good quahty.” 

“ When shall I return ^ ” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 127 

“ If I procure you a revolver, remember, it will be a 
good one.’' 

“ When will you give me an answer ? ” 

“ After your next voyage.” 

“ Do not mention that it is for me,” said Clubin. 


III. 

CLUBIN CARRIES AWAY SOMETHING AND BRINGS BACK 
NOTHING. 

SiEUR Clubin completed the loading of the Durande, em- 
barked a number of cattle and some passengers, and left 
St. Malo for Guernsey, as usual, on the Friday morning. 

On that same Friday, when the vessel had gained the 
open, which permits the captain to absent himself a 
moment from the place of command, Clubin entered his 
cabin, shut himself in, took a travelling-bag which he 
kept there, put into one of its compartments some 
biscuit, some boxes of preserves, a few pounds of choco- 
late in sticks, a chronometer, and a sea-telescope, and 
passed through the handles a cord, ready prepared to 
sHng it if necessary. Then he descended into the hold, 
went into the compartment where the cables are kept, 
and was seen to come up again with one of those knotted 
ropes heavy with pieces of metal, which are used for ship 
caulkers at sea and by robbers ashore. Cords of this 
kind are useful in climbing. 

Having arrived at Guernsey, Clubin repaired to Tor- 
teval. He took with him the travelling-bag and the 
knotted cord, but did not bring them back again. 

Let us repeat once for all, the Guernsey which we are 
describing is that ancient Guernsey which no longer 
exists, and of which it would be impossible to find a 
parallel now anywhere except in the country. There it 
is still flourishing, but in the towns it has passed away. 


128 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The same remarks apply to Jersey. St. Helier’s is as 
civilized as Dieppe, St. Peter’s Port as L’Orient. Thanks 
to the progress of civilization, thanks to the admirably 
enterprising spirit of that brave island people, every- 
thing has been changed during the last forty years in the 
Norman Archipelago. Where there was darkness there 
is now light. With these premises let us proceed. 

At that period, then, which is already so far removed 
from us as to have become historical, smuggling was 
carried on very extensively in the Channel. The smug- 
gling vessels abounded, particularly on the western coast 
of Guernsey. People of that peculiarly clever kind who 
know, even in the smallest details, what went on half a 
century ago, will even cite you the names of these sus- 
picious craft, which were almost always Austrians or 
Guiposeans. It is certain that a week scarcely ever 
passed without one or two being seen either in Saint’s 
Bay or at Pleinmont. Their coming and going had al- 
most the character of a regular service. A cavern in the 
cliffs at Sark was called then, and is still called, the 

Shops ” (“ Les Boutiques ”) from its being the place 
where these smugglers made their bargains with the 
purchasers of their merchandise. This sort of traffic 
had in the Channel a dialect of its own, a vocabulary 
of contraband technicalities now forgotten, and which 
was to the Spanish what the “ Levantine ” is to the 
Italian. 

On many parts of the English coast smuggling had a 
secret but cordial understanding with legitimate and 
open commerce. It had access to the house of more 
than one great financier, by the backstairs it is true ; 
and its influence extended itself mysteriously through 
all the commercial world, and the intricate ramifications 
of manufacturing industry. Merchant on one side, 
smuggler on the other ; such was the key to the secret 
of many great fortunes. S6guin affirmed it of Bourgain, 
Bourgain of Seguin. We do not vouch for their accusa- 
tions ; it is possible that they were calumniating each 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


129 


other» However this may have been, it is certain that 
the contraband trade, though hunted down by the law, 
was flourishing enough in certain financial circles. It 
had relations with “ the very best society.'’ Thus the 
brigand Mandrin, in other days, found himself occasion- 
ally tete~h~Ute with the Count of Charolais ; for this 
underhand trade often contrived to put on a very re- 
spectable appearance ; kept a house of its own with an 
irreproachable exterior. 

All this necessitated a host of manoeuvres and con- 
nivances, which required impenetrable secrecy. A con- 
trabandist was entrusted with a good many things, and 
knew how to keep them secret. An inviolable confi- 
dence was the condition of his existence. The first 
quality, in fact, in a smuggler was strict honour in his 
own circle. No discreetness, no smuggling. Fraud has 
its secrets like the priest’s confessional. 

These secrets were indeed, as a rule, faithfully kept. 
The contrabandist swore to betray nothing, and he kept 
his word ; nobody was more trustworthy than the 
genuine smuggler. The Judge Alcade of Oyarzun cap- 
tured a smuggler one day, and put him to torture to 
compel him to disclose the name of the capitalist who 
secretly supported him. The smuggler refused to tell. 
The capitalist in question was the J udge Alcade himself. 
Of these two accomplices, the judge and the smuggler, 
the one had been compelled, in order to appear in the 
eyes of the world to fulfil the law, to put the other to the 
torture ; which the other had patiently borne for the 
sake of his oath. 

The two most famous smugglers who haunted Plein- 
mont at that period were Blasco and Blasquito. They 
were Tocayoa. This was a sort of Spanish or Catholic 
relationship which consisted in having the same patron 
saint in heaven ; a thing, it will be admitted, not less 
worthy of consideration than having the same father 
upon earth. 

When a person was initiated into the furtive ways of 

5 


130 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the contraband business, nothing was more easy, or from 
a certain point of view more troublesome. It was suffi- 
cient to have no fear of dark nights, to repair to Plein- 
mont, and to consult the oracle located there. 


IV. 

PLEINMONT. 

t' 

Pleinmont, near Torteval, is one of the three comers of 
the island of Guernsey. At the extremity of the cape 
there rises a high turfy hill, which looks over the sea. 

The height is a lonely place. All the more lonely 
from there being one solitary house there. 

This house adds a sense of terror to that of solitude. 

It is popularly believed to be haunted. 

Haunted or not, its aspect is singular. 

Built of granite, and rising only one story high, it 
stands in the midst of the grassy solitude. It is in a 
perfectly good condition as far as exterior is concerned ,* 
the walls are thick and the roof is sound. Not a stone is 
wanting in the sides, not a tile upon the roof. A brick- 
built chimney-stack forms the angle of the roof. The 
building turns its back to the sea, being on that side 
merely a blank wall. On examining this wall, however, 
attentively, the visitor perceives a little window bricked 
up. The two gables have three dormer windows, one 
fronting the east, the others fronting the west, but both 
are bricked up in like manner. The front, which looks 
inland, has alone a door and windows. This door, too, is 
walled in, as are also the two windows of the ground floor. 
On the first floor — and this is the feature which is most 
striking as you approach — there are two open windows ; 
but these are even more suspicious than the blind 
windows. Their open squares look dark even in broad 
day, for they have no panes of glass, or even window- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


131 

frames. They open simply upon the dusk within. 
They strike the imagination like hollow eye-sockets in a 
human face. Inside all is deserted. Through the gaping 
casements you may mark the ruin within. No panel- 
lings, no woodwork ; all bare stone. It is like a win- 
dowed sepulchre, giving liberty to the spectres to look 
out upon the daylight world. The rains sap the founda- 
tions on the seaward side. A few nettles, shaken by 
the breeze, flourish in the lower part of the walls. Far 
around the horizon there is no other human habitation. 
The house is a void, the abode of silence ; but if you 
place your ear against the wall and listen, you may 
distinguish a confused noise now and then, like the 
flutter of wings. Over the walled door, upon the stone 
which forms its architrave, are sculptured these letters, 
‘‘ Elm-Pbilg,” with the date 1780.” 

The dark shadow of night and the mournful light of 
the moon find entrance there. 

The sea completely surrounds the house. Its situa- 
tion is magnificent ; but for that reason its aspect is 
more sinister. The beauty of the spot becomes a puzzle. 
Why does not a human family take up its abode here ? 
The place is beautiful, the house well-built. Whence 
this neglect ? To these questions, obvious to the reason, 
succeed others, suggested by the reverie which the place 
inspires. Why is this cultivatable garden uncultivated ? 
No master for it ; and the bricked-up doorway ? What 
has happened to the place ? Why is it shunned by men ? 
What business is done here ? If none, why is there no 
one here ? Is it only when all the rest of the world are 
asleep that some one in this spot is awake ? Dark 
squalls, wild winds, birds of prey, strange creatures, 
unknown forms, present themselves to the mind, and 
connect themselves somehow with this deserted house. 
For what class of wayfarers can this be the hostelry ? 
You imagine to yourself whirlwinds of rain and hail 
beating in at the open casements, and wandering through 
the rooms. Tempests have left their vague traces upon 


132 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the interior walls. The chambers, though walled and 
covered in, are visited by the hurricanes. Has the house 
been the scene of some great crime ? You may almost 
fancy that this spectral dwelling, given up to solitude 
and darkness, might be heard calling aloud for suc- 
cour. Does it remain silent ? Do voices indeed issue 
from it ? What business has it on hand in this lonely 
place ? The mystery of the dark hours rests securely 
here. Its aspect is disquieting at noonday ; what must 
it be at midnight ? The dreamer asks himself — for 
dreams have their coherence — what this house may be 
between the dusk of evening and the twilight of ap- 
proaching dawn ? Has the vast supernatural world some 
relation with this deserted height, which sometimes com- 
pels it to arrest its movements here, and to descend and 
to become visible ? Do the scattered elements of the 
spirit-world whirl around it ? Does the impalpable take 
form and substance here ? Insoluble riddles ! A holy 
awe is in the very stones ; that dim twilight has surely 
relations with the infinite Unknown. When the sun has 
gone down, the song of the birds will be hushed, the 
goatherd behind the hills will go homeward with his 
goats ; reptiles, taking courage from the gathering dark- 
ness, will creep through the fissures of rocks; the stars 
will begin to appear, night will come, but yonder two 
blank casements will still be staring at the sky. They 
open to welcome spirits and apparitions ; for it is by the 
names of apparitions, ghosts, phantom faces vaguely 
distinct, masks in the lurid light, mysterious movements 
of minds, and shadows, that the popular faith, at once 
ignorant and profound, translates the sombre relations 
of this dwelling with the world of darkness. 

The house is haunted ; ” the popular phrase com- 
prises everything. 

Credulous minds have their explanation ; common- 
sense thinkers have theirs also. “ Nothing is more 
simple,” say the latter, than the history of the house. 
It is an old observatory of the time of the revolutionary 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


133 


wars and the days of smuggling. It was built for such 
objects. The wars being ended, the house was aban- 
doned ; but it was not pulled down, as it might one day 
again become useful. The door and windows have been 
walled to prevent people entering, or doing injury to 
the interior. The walls of the windows, on the three 
sides which face the sea, have been bricked up against 
the winds of the south and south-west. That is all.” 

The ignorant and the credulous, however, are not 
satisfied. In the first place, the house was not built 
at the period of the wars of the Revolution. It bezurs 
the date “ 1780,” which was anterior to the Revolution. 
In the next place, it was not built for an observatory. 
It bears the letters, Elm-Pbilg,” which are the double 
monogram of two families, and which indicate, according 
to usage, that the house was built for the use of a newly- 
married couple. Then it has certainly been inhabited ; 
why then should it be abandoned ? If the door and 
windows were bricked up to prevent people entering the 
house only, why were two windows left open ? Why are 
there no shutters, no window-frames, no glass ? Why 
were the walls bricked in on one side if not on the other ? 
The wind is prevented from entering from the south ; 
but why is it allowed to enter from the north ? 

The credulous are wrong, no doubt ; but it is clear 
that the common-sense thinkers have not discovered 
the key to the mystery. The problem remains still 
unsolved. 

It is certain that the house is generally believed to 
have been more useful than inconvenient to the smugglers. 

The growth of superstitious terror tends to deprive 
facts of their true proportions. Without doubt, many 
of the nocturnal phenomena which have, by little and 
little, secured to the building the reputation of being 
haunted, might be explained by obscure and furtive 
visits, by brief sojourns of sailors near the spot, and 
sometimes by the precaution, sometimes by the daring, 
of men engaged in certain suspicious occupations con- 


134 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


cealing themselves for their dark purposes, or allowing 
themselves to be seen in order to inspire dread. 

At this period, already a remote one, many daring 
deeds were possible. The police — particularly in small 
places — was by no means as efficient as in these days. 

Add to this, that if the house was really, as was saidj; 
a resort of the smugglers, their meetings there must, up 
to .a certain point, have been safe from interruption 
precisely because the house was dreaded by the super- 
stitious people of the country. Its ghostly reputation 
prevented its being visited for other reasons. People 
do not generally apply to the police, or officers of customs^ 
on the subject of > spectres. The superstitious rely on 
making the sign of the cross ; not on magistrates and 
indictments. There is always a tacit connivance, in- 
voluntary it may be, but not the less real, between the 
objects which inspire fear and their victims. The terror- 
stricken feel a sort of culpability in having encountered 
their terrors ; they imagine themselves to have unveiled 
a secret ; and they have an inward fear, unknown even 
to themselves, of aggravating their guilt, and exciting 
the anger of the apparitions. All this makes them dis- 
creet. And over and above this reason, the very instinct 
of the credulous is silence ; dread is akin to dumbness ; 
the terrified speak little ; horror seems always to whisper. 

Hush ! ” 

It must be remembered that this was a period when 
the. Guernsey peasants believed that the Mystery of the 
Holy Manger is repeated by oxen and asses every year 
on a fixed day ; a period when no one would have dared 
to enter a stable at night for fear of coming upon the 
animals on their knees. 

If the local legends and s'tories of the people can be 
credited, the popular superstition went so far as to 
fasten to the walls of the house at Pleinmont things of 
which the traces are still visible — rats without feet, bats 
without wings, and bodies of other dead animals. Here, 
too, were seen toads crushed between the pages of a 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


135 


Bible, bunches of yellow lupins, and other strange offer- 
ings, placed there by imprudent passers-by at night, 
who, having fancied that they had seen something, hoped 
by these small sacrifices to obtain pardon, and to appease 
the ill-humours of were-wolves and evil spirits. In all 
times believers of this kind have flourished ; some even 
in very high places. Caesar consulted Saganius, and 
Napoleon Mademoiselle Lenormand. There are a kind 
of consciences so tender that they must seek indulgences 
even from Beelzebub. “ May God do, and Satan not 
undo,” was one of the prayers of Charles the Fifth. 
They come to persuade themselves that they may com- 
mit sins even against the Evil One ; and one of their 
cherished objects was to be irreproachable even in the 
eyes of Satan. We find here an explanation of those 
adorations sometimes paid to infernal spirits. It is only 
one more species of fanaticism. Sins against the devil 
certainly exist in certain morbid imaginations. The 
fancy that they have violated the laws of the lower 
regions torments certain eccentric casuists ; they are 
haunted with scruples even about offending the demons. 
A belief in the efficacy of devotions to the spirits of the 
Brocken or Armuyr, a notion of having committed sins 
against hell, visionary penances for imaginary crimes, 
avowals of the truth to the spirit of falsehood, self- 
accusation before the origin of all evil, and confessions 
in an inverted sense, are all realities, or things at least 
which have existed. The annals of criminal procedure 
against witchcraft and magic prove this in every page. 
Human folly unhappily extends even thus far ; when 
terror seizes upon a man he does not stop easily. He 
dreams of imaginary faults,. imaginary purifications, and 
clears out his conscience with the old witches’ broom. 

Be this as it may, if the house at Pleinmont had its 
secrets, it kept them to itself ; except by some rare 
chance, no one went there to see. It was left entirely 
alone. Few people, indeed, like to run the risk of an 
encounter with the other world. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


136 

Owing to the terror which it inspired, and which kept 
at a distance all who could observe or bear testimony 
on the subject, it had always been easy to obtain an 
entrance there at night by means of a rope ladder, or 
even by the use of the first ladder coming to hand in one 
of the neighbouring fields. A consignment of goods or 
provisions left there might await in perfect safety the 
time and opportunity for a furtive embarkation. Tradi- 
tion relates that forty years ago a fugitive — for political 
offences as some affirm, for commercial as others say — 
remained for some time concealed in the haunted house 
at Pleinmont ; whence he finally succeeded in embarking 
in a fishing-boat for England. From England a passage 
is easily obtained to America. 

Tradition also avers that provisions deposited in this 
house remain there untouched, Lucifer and the smugglers 
having an interest in inducing whoever places them there 
to return. 

From the summit of this house there is a view to the 
south of the Hanway Rocks, at about a mile from the 
shore. 

These rocks are famous. They have been guilty of 
all the evil deeds of which rocks are capable. They are 
the most ruthless destroyers of the sea. They lie in a 
treacherous ambush for vessels in the night. They have 
contributed to the enlargement of the cemeteries at 
Torteval and Rocquaine. 

A lighthouse was erected upon these rocks in 1862. 
At the present day, the Hanways light the way for the 
vessels which they once lured to destruction ; the de- 
stroyer in ambush now bears a lighted torch in his hand ; 
and mariners seek in the horizon, as a protector and a 
guide, the rock which they used to fly as a pitiless enemy. 
It gives confidence by night in that vast space where it 
was so long a terror — like a robber converted into a 
gendarme. 

There are three Hanways : the Great Hanway, the 
Little Hanway, and the Mauve. It is upon the Little 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA 137 

Hanway that the red light is placed at the present 
time. 

This reef of rocks forms part of a group of peaks, 
some beneath the sea, some rising out of it. It towers 
above them all ; like a fortress, it has advanced works : 
on the side of the open sea, a chain of thirteen rocks ; 
on the north, two breakers — the High Fourquies, the 
Needles, and a sandbank called the Heroude. On the 
south, three rocks — the Cat Rock, the Perc 4 e, and the 
Herpin Rock ; then two banks — the South Bank and 
the Muet : besides which, there is, on the side opposite 
Pleinmont, the Tas de Pois d’Aval. 

To swim across the channel from the Hanways to 
Pleinmont is difficult, but not impossible. We have 
already said that this was one of the achievements of 
Clubin. The expert swimmer who knows this channel 
can find two resting-places, the Round Rock, and further 
on, a little out of the course to the left, the Red Rock. 


V. 

THE BIRDS^-NESTERS. 

It was near the period of that Saturday which was passed 
by Sieur Clubin at Torteval that a curious incident 
occurred, which was little heard of at the time, and 
which did not generally transpire till a long time after- 
wards. For many things, as we have already observed, 
remain undivulged simply by reason of the terror which 
they have caused in those who have witnessed them. 

In the night-time between Saturday and Sunday — 
we are exact in the matter of the date, and we believe 
it to be correct — three boys climbed up the hill at Plein- 
mont. The boys returned to the village: they came 
from the seashore. They were what are called, in the 
corrupt French of .that part, “ deniquoiseaux,” or birds’- 
nesters. Wherever there are cliffs and cleft rocks over- 


138 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

hanging the sea, the young birds'-nesters abound. The 
reader will remember that Gilliatt interfered in this 
matter for the sake of the birds as well as for the sake 
of the children. 

The “ d^niquoiseaux ” are a sort of sea-urchins, and 
are not a very timid species. 

The night was very dark. Dense masses of cloud 
obscured the zenith. Three o’clock had sounded in the 
steeple of Torteval, which is round and pointed like a 
magician’s hat. 

Why did the boys return so late ? Nothing more 
simple. They had been searching for sea-gulls’ nests in 
the Tas de Pois d’Aval. The season having been very 
mild, the pairing of the birds had begun very early. 
The children watching the fluttering of the male and 
female about their nests, and excited by the pursuit, 
had forgotten the time. The waters had crept up around 
them ; they had no time to regain the little bay in 
which they had moored their boat, and they were com- 
pelled to wait upon one of the peaks of the Tas de Pois 
for the ebb of the tide. Hence their late return. Mothers 
wait on such occasions in feverish anxiety for the return 
of their children, and when they find them safe, give 
vent to their joy in the shape of anger, and relieve their 
tears by dealing them a sound drubbing. The boys 
accordingly hastened their steps, but in fear and trembling. 
Their haste was of that sort which is glad of an excuse for 
stopping, and which is not inconsistent with a reluctance 
to reach their destination ; for they had before them 
the prospect of warm embraces, to be followed with an 
inevitable thrashing. 

One only of the boys had nothing of this to fear. He 
was an orphan : a French boy, without father or mother, 
and perfectly content just then with his motherless con- 
dition ; for nobody taking any interest in him, his back 
was safe from the dreaded blows. The two others were 
natives of Guernsey, and belonged • to the parish of 
Torteval. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


139 


Having climbed the grassy hill, the three birds’-nesters 
reached the tableland on which was situate the haunted 
house. 

They began by being in fear, which is the proper 
frame of mind of every passer-by ; and particularly of 
every child at that hour and in that place. 

They had a strong desire to take to their heels as fast 
as possible, and a strong desire, also, to stay and look. 

They did stop. 

They looked towards the sohtary building. 

It was all dark and terrible. 

It stood in the midst of the solitary plain — an obscure 
block, a hideous but symmetrical excrescence ; a high 
square mass with right-emgled comers, like an immense 
altar in the darkness. 

The first thought of the boys was to run : the second 
was to draw nearer. They had never seen this house 
before. There is such a thing as a desire to be frightened 
arising from curiosity. They had a httle French boy 
with them, which emboldened them to approach. 

It is well known that the French have no fear. 

Besides, it is reassuring to have company in danger ; 
to be frightened in the company of two others is en- 
couraging. 

And then they were a sort of hunters accustomed to 
peril. They were children ; they were used to search, 
to rummage, to spy out hidden things. They were in 
the habit of peeping into holes ; why not into this hole ? 
Hunting is exciting. Looking into birds’ nests perhaps 
gives an itch for looking a little into a nest of ghosts. 
A rummage in the dark regions. Why not ? 

From prey to prey, says the proverb, we come to the 
devil. After the birds, the demons. The boys were on 
the way to learn the secret of those terrors of which their 
parents had told them. To be on the track of hobgoblin 
tales — nothing could be more attractive. To have long 
stories to tell like the good housewives. The notion 
was tempting. 


140 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


All this mixture of ideas, in their state of half-con- 
fusion, half-instinct, in the minds of the Guernsey birds - 
nesters, finally screwed their courage to the point. They 
approached the house. 

The little fellow who served them as a sort of moral 
support in the adventure was certainly worthy of their 
confidence. He was a bold boy — an apprentice to a 
ship-caulker ; one of those children who have already 
become men. He slept on a little straw in a shed in the 
ship-caulker’s yard, getting his own living, having red 
hair, and a loud voice ; climbing easily up walls and 
trees, not encumbered with prejudices in the matter of 
property in the apples within his reach ; a lad who had 
worked in the repairing-dock for vessels of war — a child 
of chance, a happy orphan, born in France, no one 
knew exactly where ; ready to give a centime to a 
beggar ; a mischievous fellow, but a good one at heart ; 
one who had talked to Parisians. At this time he was 
earning a shilling a day by caulking the fishermen’s 
boats under repair at the Pequeries. When he felt in- 
clined he gave himself a holiday, and went birds’-nesting. 
Such was the little French boy. 

The solitude of the place impressed them with a 
strange feeling of dread. They felt the threatening aspect 
of the silent house. It was wild and savage. The naked 
and deserted plateau terminated in a precipice at a 
short distance from its steep incline. The sea below 
was quiet. There was no wind. Not a blade of grass 
stirred. 

The birds’-nesters advanced by slow steps, the French 
boy at their head, and looking towards the house. 

One of them, afterwards relating the story, or as 
much of it as had remained in his head, added, It did 
not speak.” 

They came nearer, holding their breath, as one might 
approach a savage animal. 

They had climbed the hill at the side of the house 
which descended to seaward towards a little isthmus of 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


141 

rocks almost inaccessible. Thus they had come pretty 
near to the building ; but they saw only the southern 
side, which was all walled up. They did not dare to 
approach by the other side, where the terrible windows 
were. 

They grew bolder, however ; the caulker’s apprentice 
whispered, “ Let’s veer to larboard. That’s the hand- 
some side. Let’s have a look at the black windows.” 

The little band accordingly “ veered to larboard,” and 
came round to the other side of the house. 

The two windows were lighted up. 

The boys took to their heels. 

When they had got to some distance, the French boy, 
however, returned, 

“ Hillo ! ” said he, “ the lights have vanished.” 

The light at the windows had, indeed, disappeared. 
The outline of the building was seen as sharply defined 
as if stamped out with a punch against the livid sky. 

Their fear was not abated, but their curiosity had 
increased. The birds’-nesters approached. 

Suddenly the light reappeared at both windows at 
the same moment. 

The two young urchins from Torteval took to their 
heels and vanished. The daring French boy did not 
advance, but he kept his ground. 

He remained motionless, confronting the house and 
watching it. 

The light disappeared, and appeared again once more. 
Nothing could be more horrible. The reflection made a 
vague streak of light upon the grass, wet with the night 
dew. All of a moment the light cast upon the walls of 
the house two huge dark profiles, and the shadows of 
enormous heads. 

The house, however, being without ceilings, and having 
nothing left but its four walls and roof, one window 
could not be lighted without the other. 

Perceiving that the caulker’s apprentice kept his 
ground, the other birds’-nesters returned, step by step, 


142 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


and one after the other, trembling and curious. The ] 

caulker^s apprentice whispered to them, “ There are 
ghosts in the house. I have seen the nose of one.*' ' 

The two Torteval boys got behind their companion, ■ 

standing tiptoe against his shoulder ; and thus sheltered, ; 

and taking him for their shield, felt bolder and watched ■ 

also. ^ 

The house on its part seemed also to be watching 
them. There it stood in the midst of that vast dark- I 

ness and silence, with its two glaring eyes. These were ' 

its upper windows. The light vanished, reappeared, and : 

vanished again, in the fashion of these unearthly illu- , 

minations. These sinister intermissions had probably / . 
some connection with the opening and shutting of the 
infernal regions. The air-hole of a sepulchre has thus 
been seen to produce effects like those from a dark 
lantern. ; 

Suddenly a dark form, like that of a human being, 
ascended to one of the windows, as if from without, and 
plunged into the interior of the house. 

To enter by the window is the custom with spirits. 

The light was for a moment more brilliant, then went 
out, and appeared no more. The house became dark. 

The noises resembled voices. This is always the case. 
When there was anything to be seen it is silent. When 
all became invisible again, noises were heard 
There is a silence peculiar to night-time at sea. The 
repose of darkness is deeper on the water than on the 
land. When there is neither wind nor wave in that 
wild expanse, over which, in ordinary time, even the 
flight of eagles makes no sound, the movement of a fly ; 
could be heard. This sepulchral quiet gave a dismi 
relief to the noises which issued from the house. v 

“ Let us look,’* said the French boy. 

And he made a step towards the house. 

The others were so frightened that they resolved to 
follow him. They did not dare even to run away alone. 

Just as they had passed a heap of fagots, which for ^ 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


143 


some mysterious resison seemed to inspire them with 
a httle courage in that solitude, a white owl flew towards 
theml from a bush. The owls have a suspicious sort of 
flighty a sidelong skim which is suggestive of mischief 
afloat The bird passed near the boys, fixing upon them 
its round eyes, bright amidst Uie darkness. 

A shudder ran through the group behind the French 
boy. 

He looked up at the owl and said, — 

“ Too late, my bird ; I will look.” 

And he advanced. 

The crackling sound made by his thick-nailed boots 
among the furze bushes did not prevent his hearing the 
noise in the house, which rose and fell with the continu- 
ousness and the calm accent of a dialogue. 

A moment afterwards the boy added, — 

“ Besides, it is only fools who believe in spirits.” 

Insolence in the face of danger rallies the cowardly, 
and inspirits them to go on. 

The two Torteval lads resumed their march, quicken- 
ing their steps behind the caulker’s apprentice. 

The haunted house seemed to them to grow larger 
before their eyes. This optical illusion of fear is founded 
in reality. The house did indeed grow larger, for they 
were coming nearer to it. 

Meanwhile the voices in the house took a tone more 
and more distinct. The children listened. The ear, too, 
has its power of exaggerating. It was different to a 
murmur, more than a whispering, less than an uproar. 
Now and then one or two words, clearly articulated, could 
be caught. These words, impossible to be understood, 
sounded strangely. The boys stopped and hstened ; 
then went forward again. 

“ It’s the ghosts talking,” said the caulker’s appren- 
tice ; “ but I don’t believe in ghosts.” 

The Torteval boys were sorely tempted to shrink 
behind the heap of fagots, but they had already left it 
far behind ; and their friend the caulker continued to 


7 • . 


144 the toilers OF THE SEA. ^ 

advance towards the house. They trembled at remain^ 
ing with him ; but they dared not leave him. ' 

Step by step, and perplexed, they followed. The 
caulker’s apprentice turned towards them and said, — 

“You know it isn’t true. There are no such things.” 

The house grew taller ^d taller. The voices became 
more and more distinct. 

They drew nearer. 

And now they could perceive within the house some- 
thing like a muffled light. It was a faint glimmer, like 
one of those effects produced by dark lanterns, already 
referr^^d to, and which are common at the midnight 
meetings of witches. 

When they were close to the house they halted. 

One of the two Torteval boys ventured on an observa- 
tion : — 

“ It isn’t spirits ; it is ladies dressed in white.” 

“ What’s that hanging from the window ? ” asked the 
other. 

“ It looks like a rope.” 

“ It’s a snake.” 

“ It is only a hangman’s rope,” said the French boy 
authoritatively. “ That’s what they use. Only I don’t 
believe in them.” 

And in three bounds, rather than steps, he found 
himself against the wall of the building. 

The two others, trembling, imitated him, and came 
pressing against him, one on his right side, the other 
on his left. The boys apphed their ears to the wall. 
The sounds continued. 

The following was the conversation of the phantoms : — 

“ So that is understood ? ” 

“ Perfectly.” 

“ As is arranged ? ” 

“ As is arranged.” 

“ A man will wait here, and can accompany Blasquito 
to England.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


3:45 

“ Paying the expense ? ** 

“ Paying the expense.” 

“ Blasquito will take the man in his bark.” 

'' Without seeking to know what country he belongs 
to ? ” 

That is no business of ours.” 

“ Without asking his name ? ” 

“ We do not ask for names ; we only feel the weight 
of the purse.” 

“ Good : the man shall wait in this house.” 

'' He must have provisions.” 

He will be furnished with them.” 

“ How ? ” 

From this bag which I have brought.” 

Very good.” 

“ Can I leave this bag here ? ” 

'' Smugglers are not robbers.” 

“ And when do you go ? ” 

“ To-morrow morning. If your man was ready he 
could come with us.” 

“ He is not prepared.” 

That is his affair.” 

“ How many days will he have to wait in this house ? ” 
“ Two, three, or four days — more or less.” 

“ Is it certain that Blasquito will come ? ” 

“ Certain.” 

Here to Pleinmont ? ” 

“ To Pleinmont.” 

“ When ? ” 

Next week.” 

What day ? ” 

“ Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.” 

'' May he not fail ? ” 

“ He is my Tocayo.” 

'' Will he come in any weather ? ” 

‘‘ At any time. He has no fear. My name is Blasco, 
his Blasquito.” 

“ So he cannot fail to come to Guernsey ? ” 


146 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


‘‘ I come one month — ^he the other.” 

“ I understand.” 

“ Counting from Saturday last, one week from to-day. 
five days cannot elapse without bringing Blasquito.” 

But if there is much sea .? ” 

“ Bad weather ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Blasquito will not come so quickly, but he will come.” 
“ Whence will he come ? ” 

“ From Bilbao.” 

Where will he be going ? ” 

‘‘ To Portland.” 

“ Good.” 

“ Or to Torbay.” 

“ Better still.” 

Your man may rest easy.” 

“ Blasquito will betray nothing ? ” 

“ Cowards are the only traitors. We are men of 
courage. The sea is the church of winter. Treason is 
the church of hell.” 

“No one hears what we say ? ” 

“ It is impossible to be seen or overheard. The 
people’s fear of this spot makes it deserted.” 

“ I know it.” 

“ Who is there who would dare to listen here ? ” 

“ True.” 

“ Besides, if they listened, none would understand. 
We speak a wild language of our own, which nobody 
knows hereabouts. As you know it, you are one of us.” 
“ I came only to make these arrangements with you.” 
“ Very good.” 

“ I must now take my leave.” 

“ Be it so.” 

“ Tell me : suppose the passenger should wish Blas- 
quito to take him anywhere else than to Portland or 
Torbay ? ” 

“ Let him bring some gold coins.” 

“ Will Blasquito consult the stranger’s convenience ? ” 


147 


\ 

THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

“ Blasquito will do whatever the gold coins command.” 

'' Does it take long to go to Torbay ? ” 

That is as it pleases the winds.” 

“ Eight hours ? ” 

More or less.” 

“ Will Blasquito obey the passenger ? ” 

“ If the sea will obey Blasquito.” 

“ He will be well rewarded.” 

“ Gold is gold, and the sea is the sea.” 

“ That is true.” 

“ Man with his gold does what he can. Heaven with 
its winds does what it will.” 

“ The man who is to accompany Blasquito will be 
here on Friday.” 

“ Good.” 

“ At what hour will Blasquito appear ? ” 

In the night. We arrive by night, and sail by night. 
We have a wife who is called the sea, and a sister called 
night. The wife betrays sometimes ; but the sister 
never.” 

“ All is settled, then. Good-night, my men.” 
Good-night. A drop of brandy first ? ” 

“ Thank you.” 

'' That is better than a syrup.” 

‘‘ I have your word.” 

My name is Point-of-Honour.” 

Adieu.” 

You are a gentleman ; I am a caballero.” 

It was clear that only devils could talk in this way. 
The children did not listen long. This time they took 
to flight in earnest ; the French boy, convinced at last, 
running even quicker than the others. 

On the Tuesday following this Saturday, Sieur Clubin 
returned to St. Malo, bringing back the Durande. 

The Tamaulipas was still at anchor in the roads. 

Sieur Clubin, between the whiffs of his pipe, said to 
the landlord of the Jean Auberge, — 


148 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


“Well; and when does the Tamaulipas get under ^ 
way ? 

“ The day after to-morrow — ^Thursday, replied the 
landlord. 

On that evening Clubin supped at the coastguard 
officers’ table ; and, contrary to his habit, went out after 
his supper. The consequence of his absence was that 
he could not attend to the office of the Durande, and 
thus lost a little in the matter of freights. This fact 
was remarked in a man ordinarily punctual.' 

It appeared that be had chatted a few moments with 
his friend the money-changer. 

He returned two hours after Noguette had sounded 
the Curfew bell. The Brazilian bell sounds at ten o’clock. 
It was therefore midnight. 


VI. 

THE JACRESSADE. 

Forty years ago St. Malo possessed an alley known by 
the name of the “ Ruelle Coutanchez.” This alley no 
longer exists, having been removed for the improvements 
of the town. 

It was a double row of houses, leaning one towsirds 
the other, and leaving between them just room enough 
for a narrow rivulet, which was called the street. By 
stretching the legs, it was possible to walk on both sides 
of the little stream, touching with head or elbows, as 
you went, the houses either on the right or the left. 
These old relics of mediaeval Normandy have almost a 
human interest. Tumble-down houses and sorcerers 
always go together. Their leaning stories, their over- 
hanging walls, their bowed penthouses, and their old 
thickset irons seem like lips, chin, nose, and eyebrows. 
The garret window is the blind eye. The walls are the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


149 


wrinkled and blotchy cheeks. The opposite houses lay 
their foreheads together as if they were plotting some 
malicious deed. All those words of ancient villainy — 
like cutthroat, slit-weazand,” and the like — are closely 
connected with architecture of this kind. 

One of these houses in the alley — the largest and the 
most famous, or notorious — was fmown by the name of 
the Jacressade. 

The Jacressade was a lodging-house for people who 
do not lodge. In all towns, and particularly in sea- 
ports, there is always found beneath the lowest stratum 
of society a sort of residuum — vagabonds who are more 
than a match for justice ; rovers after adventures ; 
chemists of the swindling order, who are always dropping 
their lives into the melting-pot ; people in rags of every 
shape, and in every style of wearing them ; withered 
fruits of roguery ; bankrupt existences ; consciences • 
that have filled their schedule ; men who have failed in 
the housebreaking trade (for the great masters of bur- 
glary move in a higher sphere) ; workmen and work- 
women in the trade of wickedness ; oddities, male and 
female ; men in coats out at elbows ; scoundrels reduced 
to indigence ; rogues who have missed the wages of 
roguery ; men who have been hit in the social duel ; 
harpies who have no longer any prey ; petty larceners ; 
gmux in the double and unhappy meaning of that word. 
Such are the constituents of that living mass. Human 
nature is here reduced to something bestial. It is the 
refuse of the social state, heaped up in an obscure comer, 
where from time to time descends that dreaded broom 
which is known by the name of police. In St. Malo 
the J acressade was the name of this comer. 

It is not in dens of this sort that we find the high-class 
criminals — the robbers, forgers, and other great prod- 
ucts of ignorance and poverty. If murder is represented 
here, it is generally in the person of some coarse dmnkard ; h. 
in the matter of robbery, the company rarely rise higher’ 
than the mere sharper. The vagrant is there, but not 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


150 

the highwayman. It would not, however, be safe tc 
trust this distinction. This last stage of vagabondage 
may have its extremes of scoundrelism. It was on an 
occasion, when casting their nets into the Epi-scie — • 
which was in Paris what the J acressade was in St. Malo 
— ^that the police captured the notorious Lacenaire. 

These lurking-places refuse nobody. To fall in the 
social scale has a tendency to bring men to one level. 
Sometimes honesty in tatters found itself there. Virtue 
and probity have been known before now to be brought 
to strange passes. We must not judge always by appear- 
ances, even in the palace or at the galleys. Public 
respect, as well as universal reprobation, requires testing. 
Surprising results sometimes spring from this principle. 
An angel may be discovered in the stews ; a pearl in 
the dunghill. Such sad and dazzling discoveries are not 
altogether unknown. 

The Jacressade was rather a courtyard than a house, 
and more of a well than a courtyard. It had no stories 
looking on the street. Its fa9ade was simply a high 
wall, with a low gateway. You raised the latch, pushed 
the gate, and were at once in the courtyard. 

In the midst of this yard might be perceived a round 
hole, encircled with a margin of stones, and even with 
the ground. The yard was small, the well large. A 
broken pavement surrounded it. 

The courtyard was square, and built on three sides 
only. On the side of the street was only the wall ; 
facing you as you entered the gateway stood the house, 
the two wings of which formed the sides to right and left. 

Any one entering there after nightfall, at his own risk 
and peril, would have heard a confused murmur of 
voices ; and, if there had been moonlight or starlight 
enough to give shape to the obscure lorms before his 
eyes, this is what he would have seen. 

The courtyard: the well. Around the courtyard, in 
front of the gate, a lean-to or shed, in a sort of horse- 
shoe form, but with square comers ; a rotten gallery. 


I 

THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 151 

with a roof of joists supported by stone pillars at unequal 
distances. In the centre the well ; around the well, 
upon a litter of straw, a kind of circular chaplet, formed 
of the soles of boots and shoes ; some trodden down at 
heel, some showing the toes of the wearers, some the 
naked heels. The feet of men, women,, and children, 
all asleep. 

Beyond these feet the eye might have distinguished, 
in the shadow of the shed, bodies, drooping heads, forms 
stretched out lazily, bundles of rags of both sexes — a 
promiscuous assemblage, a strange and revolting mass 
of life. The accommodation of this sleeping-chamber 
was open to all, at the rate of two sous a week. On a 
stormy night the rain fell upon the feet, the whirling 
snow settled on the bodies of those wretched sleepers. 

Who were these people ? The unknown. They came 
there at night, and departed in the morning. Creatures 
of this kind form part of the social fabric. Some stole 
in during the darkness, and paid nothing. The greater 
part had scarcely eaten during the day. All kinds of 
vice and baseness, every sort of moral infection, every 
species of distress were there. The same sleep settled 
down upon all in this bed of filth. The dreams of all 
these companions in misery went on side by side. A 
dismal meeting-place, where misery and weakness, half- 
sobered debauchery, weariness from long walking to and 
fro, with evil thoughts, in quest of bread, pallor with 
closed eyelids, remorse, envy, lay mingled and festering 
in the same miasma, with faces that had the look of 
death, and dishevelled hair mixed with the filth and 
sweepings of the streets. Such was the putrid heap of 
life fermenting in this dismal spot. An unlucky turn 
of the wheel of fortune, a ship arrived on the day before, 
a discharge from prison, a dark night, or some other 
chance, had cast them here, to find a miserable shelter. 
Every day brought some new accumulation of such 
misery. Let him enter who would, sleep who could, 
speak who dared ; for it was a place of whispers. The 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


152 

newcomers hastened to bury themselves in the mass, 
or tried to seek oblivion in sleep, since there was none 
in the darkness of the place. They snatched what 
little of themselves they could from the jaws of death. 
They closed their eyes in that confusion of horrors which 
every day renewed. They were the embodiment of 
misery thrown off from society, as the scum is from 
the sea. 

It was not every one who could even get a share of 
the straw. More than one figure was stretched out naked 
upon the flags. They lay down worn out with weari- 
ness, and awoke paralyzed. The well, without lid or 
parapet, and thirty feet in depth, gaped open night and 
day. Rain fell around it ; filth accumulated about, and 
the gutters of the yard ran down and filtered through its 
sides. The pail for drawing the water stood by the side. 
Those who were thirsty drank there ; some, disgusted 
with life, drowned themselves in it — slipped from their 
slumber in the filthy shed into that profounder sleep. 
In the year 1819 the body of a boy of fourteen years 
old was taken up out of this well. 

To be safe in this house, it was necessary to be of the 
“ right sort.” The uninitiated were regarded with sus- 
picion. 

Did these miserable wretches, then, know each other ? 
No ; yet they scented out the genuine guest of the 
Jacressade. 

The mistress of the house was a young and rather 
pretty woman, wearing a cap trimmed with ribbons. 
She washed herself now and then with water from the 
well. She had a wooden leg. 

At break of day the courtyard became empty. Its 
inmates dispersed. 

An old cock and some other fowls were kept in the 
courtyard, where they raked among the filth of the 
place all day long. A long horizontal beam, supported 
by posts, traversed the yard — a gibbet-shaped erection, 
not out of keeping with the associations of the place. 


153 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

Sometimes, on the morrow of a rainy day, a silk dress, 
mudded and wet, would be seen hanging out to dry 
upon this beam. It belonged to the woman with the 
wooden leg. 

Over the shed, and, like it, surrounding the yard, was 
a story, and above this story a loft. A rotten wooden 
ladder, passing through a hole in the roof of the shed, 
conducted to this story ; and up this ladder the woman 
would climb, sometimes staggering while its crazy rounds 
creaked beneath her. 

The occasional lodgers, whether by the week or the 
night, slept in the courtyard ; the regular inmates lived 
in the house. 

Windows without a pane of glass, door-frames with 
no door, fireplaces without stoves — such were the chief 
features of the interior. You might pass from one room 
to the other, indifferently, by a long square aperture 
which had been the door, or by a triangular hole be- 
tween the joists of the partitions. The fallen plaster 
of the ceiling lay about the floor. It was difficult to say 
how the old house still stood erect. The high winds 
indeed shook it. The lodgers ascended as they could 
by the worn and slippery steps of the ladder. Every- 
thing was open to the air. The wintry atmosphere was 
absorbed into the house, like water into a sponge. The 
multitude of spiders seemed alone to guarantee the place 
against falling to pieces immediately. There was no 
sign of furniture. Two or three palliasses were in the 
comer, their ticking tom in parts, and showing more 
dust than straw within. Here and there were a water- 
pot and an earthen pipkin. A close, disagreeable odour 
haunted the rooms. 

The windows looked out upon the square yard. The 
scene was like the interior of a scavenger’s cart. The 
things, not to speak of the human beings, which lay 
rusting, mouldering, and putref5dng there, were in- 
describable. The fragments seemed to fraternize to- 
gether. Some fell from the walls, others from the living 


154 the toilers OF THE SEA. 

tenants of the place. The debris were sown with their 
tatters. 

Besides the floating population which bivouacked 
nightly in the square yard, the Jacressade had three 
permanent lodgers — a charcoal-man, a rag-picker, and 
a “ gold-maker.” The charcoal-man and the rag-picker 
occupied two of the palliasses of the first story ; the 
“ gold-maker,” a chemist, lodged in the loft, which was 
called, no one knew why, the garret. Nobody knew 
where the woman slept. The “ gold-maker ” was a poet 
in a small way. He inhabited a room in the roof, under 
the tiles — a chamber with a narrow window, and a large 
stone fireplace forming a gulf, in which the wind howled 
at will. The garret window having no frame, he had 
nailed across it a piece of iron sheathing, part of the 
wreck of a ship. This sheathing left little room for the 
entrance of light and much for the entrance of -cold. 
The charcoal-man paid rent from time to time in the 
shape of a sack of charcoal ; the rag-picker paid with a 
bowl of grain for the fowls every week ; the “ gold-maker ” 
did not pay at all. Meanwhile the latter consumed the 
very house itself for fuel. He had pulled down the 
little woodwork which remained ; and every now and 
then he took from the wall or the roof a lath or some 
scantling, to heat his crucible. Upon the partition, above 
the rag-picker’s mattress, might have been seen two 
columns of figures, marked in chalk by the rag-picker 
himself from week to week — a column of threes and a 
column of fives, according as the bowl of grain had cost 
him three liards or five centimes. The gold-pot of the 
“ chemist ” was an old fragment of a bomb-shell, pro- 
moted by him to the dignity -of a crucible, in which he 
mixed his ingredients. The transmutation of metals 
absorbed all his thoughts. He was determined before 
he died to revenge himself by breaking the windows of 
orthodox science with the red philosopher’s stone. His 
furnace consumed a good deal of wood. The handrail 
of the stnirs had disappeared. The house was slowly 


155 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

burning away. The landlady said to him, '‘You will 
leave us nothing but the shell. He mollified her by 
addressing her in verses. 

Such was the Jacressade. 

A boy of twelve, or perhaps sixteen — for he was like 
a dwarf, with a large wen upon his neck, and always 
canying a broom in his hand — was the domestic of the 
place. 

The habitues entered by the gateway of the courtyard ; 
the public entered by the shop. 

In the high wall, facing the street, and to the right of 
the entrance to the courtyard, was a square opening, 
serving at once as a door and a window. This was the 
shop. The square opening had a shutter and a frame 
— the only shutter in all the house which had hinges 
and bolts. Behind this square aperture, which was open 
to the street, was a little room, a compartment obtained 
by curtailing the sleeping shed in the courtyard. Over 
the door passers-by read the inscription in charcoal, 
“ Curiosities sold here." On three boards, forming the 
shop front, were several china pots without ears, a 
Chinese parasol made of gold-beater^s skin, and orna- 
mented with figures, tom here and there, and impossible 
to open or shut ; fragments of iron, and shapeless pieces 
of old pottery, and dilapidated hats and bonnets ; three 
or four shells, some packets of old bone and metal 
buttons, a tobacco-box with a portrait of Marie Antoi- 
nette, and a dog’s-eared volume of Boisbertrand’s Algebra. 
Such was the stock of the shop ; this assortment com- 
pleted the “ curiosities." The shop communicated by 
a back door with the yard in which was the well. It 
was furnished with a table and a stool. The woman 
with a wooden leg presided at the counter. 


156 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 

VII. 

NOCTURNAL BUYERS AND MYSTERIOUS SELLERS, 

Clubin had been absent from the Jean Auberge all the 
evening of Tuesday. On the Wednesday night he was 
absent again. 

In the dusk of that evening two strangers penetrated 
into the mazes of the Ruelle Coutanchez. They stopped 
in front of the Jacressade, One of them knocked at 
the window ; the door of the shop opened, and they 
entered. The woman with the wooden leg met them 
with the smile which she reserved for respectable citizens. 
There was a candle on the table. 

The strangers were, in fact, respectable citizens. The 
one who had knocked said, Good-day, mistress. I have 
come for that affair.” 

The woman with the wooden leg smiled again, and 
went out by the back door leading to the courtyard, 
and where the well was. A moment afterwards the 
back door was opened again, and a man stood in the 
doorway. He wore a cap and a blouse. It was easy 
to see the shape of something under his blouse. He had 
bits of old straw in his clothes, and looked as if he had 
just been aroused from sleep. 

He advanced and exchanged glances with the strangers. 
The man in the blouse looked puzzled, but cunning ; he 
said, — 

“You are the gunsmith ? ” 

The one who had tapped at the window replied, — 

“ Yes ; you are the man from Paris ? ” 

“ Known as Redskin. Yes.” 

“ Show me the thing.” 

The man took from under his blouse a weapon ex- 
tremely rare at that period in Europe. It was a revolver. 

The weapon was new and bright. The two strangers 
examined it. The one who- seemed to know the house, 
and whom the man in the blouse had called “ the gum 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


157 


smith,” tried the mechanism. He passed the weapon 
to the other, who appeared less at home there, and kept 
his back turned to the light. 

The gunsmith continued, — 

How much ? ” 

The man in the blouse replied, — 

“ I have just brought it from America. Some people 
bring monkeys, parrots, and other animals, as if the 
French people were savages. For myself I brought this. 
It is a useful invention.” 

“ How much ? ” inquired the gunsmith again. 

It is a pistol which turns and turns.” 

“ How much ? ” 

Bang ! the first fire. Bang ! the second fire. Bang ! 
the third fire. What a hailstorm of bullets ! That will 
do some execution.” 

“ The price ? ” 

‘‘ There are six barrels.” 

“ Well, well, what do you want for it ? ” 

Six barrels ; that is six Louis.” 

Will you take five ? ” 

“ Impossible. One Louis a ball. That is the price.” 

“ Come, let us do business together. Be reasonable.” 

“ I have named a fair price. Examine the weapon, 
Mr. Gunsmith.” 

I have examined it.” 

The barrel twists and turns like Talleyrand himself. 
The weapon ought to be mentioned in the ‘ Dictionary 
of Weathercocks.' It is a gem.” 

“ I have looked at it.” 

The barrels are of Spanish make.” 

“ I see they are.” 

“ They are twisted. This is how this twisting is done. 
They empty into a forge the basket of a collector of old 
iron. They fill it full of these old scraps, with old nails, 
and broken horse-shoes swept out of farriers' shops.” 

“ And old sickle-blades.” 

“ I was going to say so, Mr. Gunsmith. They apply 


158 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


to all this rubbish a good sweating heat, and this makes 
a magnificent materid for gun-barrels.’' 

“ Yes ; but it may have cracks, flaws, or crosses.” 

“ True ; but they remedy the crosses by little twists, 
and avoid the risk of doublings by beating hard. They 
bring their mass of iron under the great hammer ; give 
it two more good sweating heats. If the iron has been 
heated too much, they retemper it with dull heats and 
lighter hammers. And then they take out their stuff 
and roll it well ; and with this iron they manufacture 
you a weapon like this.” 

“You are in the trade, I suppose ? ” 

“ I am of all trades.” 

“ The barrels are pale-coloured.” 

“ That’s the beauty of them, Mr. Gunsmith. The 
tint is obtained with antimony.” 

“ It is settled, then, that we give you five Louis ? ” 

“ Allow me to observe that I had the honour of saying 
six.” 

The gunsmith lowered his voice. 

“ Hark you, master. Take advantage of the oppor- 
tunity. Get rid of this thing. A weapon of this kind 
is of no use to a man like you. It will make you re- 
marked.” 

“ It is very true,” said the Parisian. “ It is rather 
conspicuous. It is more suited to a gentleman.” 

“ Will you take five Louis ? 

“No, six ; one for every shot.” 

“ Come, six Napoleons.” 

• “ I will have six Louis.” 

“ You are not a Bonapartist, then. You prefer a 
Louis to a Napoleon.” 

The Parisian nicknamed “ Redskin ” smiled. 

“ A Napoleon is greater,” said he, “ but a Louis is 
worth more.” 

“ Six Napoleons.” 

“ Six Louis. It makes a difference to me of four-and- 
twenty francs.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


159 


The bargain is off in that case.’* 

“ Good : I keep the toy.” 

Keep it.” 

“ Beating me down ! a good idea ! It shall never be 
said that I got rid like that of a wonderful specimen of 
ingenuity.” 

“ Good-night, then.” 

“It marks a whole stage in the progress of making 
pistols, which the Chesapeake Indians call Nortay-u-Hah.” 

“ Five Louis, ready money. Why, it is a handful of 
gold.” 


“ ‘ Nortay-u-Hah,’ that signifies ' short gun.’ A good 
many people don’t know that.” 

“Will you take five Louis, and just a bit of silver ? ” 

“ I said six, master.” 

The man who kept his back to the candle, and who 
had not yet spoken, was spending his time during the 
dialogue in turning and testing the mechanism of the 
pistol. He approached the armourer’s ear and whis- 
pered, — 

“ Is it a good weapon ? ” 

“ Excellent.” 

“ I will give the six Louis.” 

Five minutes afterwards, while the Parisian nick- 
named “ Redskin ” was depositing the six Louis which 
he had just received in a secret slit under the breast of 
his blouse, the armourer and his companion carrying the 
revolver in his trousers pocket, stepped out into the 
straggling street. 


VIII. 

A “ CANNON ” OFF THE RED BALL AND THE BLACK. 

On the morrow, which was a Thursday, a tragic circum- 
stance occurred at a short distance from St. Malo, near 
the peak of the “ Decode, ” a spot where the cliff is high 
and the sea deep. 


i6o THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

A' line of rocks in the form of the top of a lance, and 
connecting themselves with the land by a narrow isthmus, 
stretch out there into the water, ending abruptly with a 
large peak-shaped breaker. Nothing is commoner in 
the architecture of the sea. In attempting to reach the 
plateau of the peaked rock from the shore it was neces- 
sary to follow an inclined plane, the ascent of which was 
here and there somewhat steep. 

It was upon a plateau of this kind, towards four o’clock 
in the afternoon, that a man was standing, enveloped 
in a large military cape, and armed ; a fact easy to be 
perceived from certain straight and angular folds in his 
mantle. The summit on which this man was resting 
was a rather extensive platform, dotted with large masses 
of rock, like enormous paving-stones, leaving between 
them narrow passages. This platform, on which a kind 
of thick, short grass grew here and there, came to an end 
on the seaside in an open space, leading to a perpendicular 
escarpment. The escarpment, rising about sixty feet 
above the level of the sea, seemed cut down by the aid 
of a plumb-line. Its left angle, however, w 2 ls broken 
away, and formed one of those natural staircases common 
to granite cliffs worn by the sea, the steps of which are 
somewhat inconvenient, requiring sometimes the strides 
of a giant or the leaps of an acrobat. These stages of 
rock descended perpendicularly to the sea, where they 
were lost. It was a breakneck place. However, in 
case of absolute necessity, a man might succeed in em- 
barking there, under the very wall of the cliff. 

• A breeze was sweeping the sea. The man wrapped in 
his cape and standing firm, with his left hand grasping 
his right shoulder, closed one eye, and applied the other 
to a telescope. He seemed absorbed in anxious scrutiny. 
He had approached the edge of the escarpment, and 
stood there motionless, his gaze immovably fixed on the 
horizon. The tide was high ; the waves were beating 
below against the foot of the cliffs. 

The object which the stranger was observing was a 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


i6i 

vessel in the offing, and which was manoeuvring in a 
strange manner. The vessel, which had hardly left the 
port of St. Malo an hour, had stopped behind the Ban- 
quetiers. It had not cast anchor, perhaps because the 
bottom would only have permitted it to bear to leeward 
on the edge of the cable, and because the ship would 
have strained on her anchor under the cutwater. Her 
captain had contented himself with lying-to. 

The stranger, who was a coast-guardman, as was ap- 
parent from his uniform cape, watched all the move- 
ments of the three-master, and seemed to note them 
mentally. The vessel was l5dng-to, a little off the wind, 
which was indicated by the backing of the small topsail 
and the bellying of the main topsail. She had squared 
the mizzen, and set the topmast as close as possible, and 
in such a manner as to work the sails against each other, 
and to make little way either on or off shore. Her cap- 
tain evidently did not care to expose his vessel much 
to the wind, for he had only braced up the small mizzen 
topsail. In this way, coming crossway on, he did not 
drift at the utmost more than half a league an hour. 

It was still broad daylight, particularly on the open 
sea, and on the heights of the cliff. The shores below 
were becoming dark. 

The coast-guardman, still engaged in his duty, and 
carefully scanning the offing, had not thought of observ- 
ing the rocks at his side and at his feet. He turned his 
back towards the difficult sort of causeway which formed 
the communication between his resting-place and the 
shore. He did not, therefore, remark that something 
was moving in that direction. Behind a fragment of 
rock, among the steps of that causeway, something like 
the figure of a man had been concealed, according to 
all appearances, since the arrival of the coast-guardman. 
From time to time a head issued from the shadow behind 
the rock, looked up, and watched the watcher. Tho 
head, surmounted by a wide-brimmed American hat, 
was that of the Quaker-looking man, who, ten days 

6 


i 62 


' THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


before, was talking among the stones of the Petit-Bey 
to Captain Zuela. 

Suddenly the curiosity of the coast-guardman seemed 
to be still more strongly awakened. He polished the 
glass of his telescope quickly with his sleeve, and brought 
it to bear closely upon the three-master. 

A little black spot seemed to detach itself from her 
side. 

The black spot, looking like a small insect upon the 
water, was a boat. 

The boat seemed to be making for the shore. It was 
manned by several sailors, who were pulling vigorously. 

She pulled crosswise by little and little, and appeared 
to be approaching the Pointe du D6colle. 

The gaze of the coast-guardman seemed to have reached 
its most intense point. No movement of the boat escaped 
it. He had approached nearer still to the verge of the 
rock. 

At that instant a man of large stature appeared on 
one of the rocks behind him. It was the Quaker. The 
officer did not see him. 

The man paused an instant, his arms at his sides, but 
with his fists doubled ; and with the eye of a hunter, 
watching for his prey, he observed the back of the officer. 

Four steps only separated them. He put one foot 
forward, then stopped ; took a second step, and stopped 
again. He made no movement except the act of walk- 
ing ; all the rest of his body was motionless as a statue. 
His foot fell upon the tufts of grass without noise. He 
made a third step, and paused again. He was almost 
within reach of the coastguard, who stood there still 
motionless with his telescope. The man brought his 
two closed fists to a level with his collar-bone, then 
struck out his arms sharply, and his two fists, as if 
thrown from a sling, struck the coast-guardman on the 
two shoulders. The shock was decisive. The coast- 
guardman had not the time to utter a cry. He fell 
head first from the height of the rock into the sea. His 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 163 

boots appeared in the air about the time occupied by a 
flash of lightning. ' It was hke the fall of a stone in the 
sea, which instantly closed over him. 

Two or three circles widened out upon the dark water. 

Nothing remained but the telescope, which had dropped 
from the hands of the man, and lay upon the turf. 

The Quaker leaned over the edge of the escarpment a 
moment, watched the circles vanishing on the water, 
waited a few minutes, and then rose again, singing in 
a low voice, — 

“The captain of police is dead. 

Through having lost his life.” 

He knelt down a second time. Nothing reappeared. 
Only, at the spot where the officer had been engulfed, 
he observed on the surface of the water a sort of dark 
spot, which became diffused with the gentle lapping of 
the waves. It seemed probable that the coast-guardman 
had fractured his skull against some rock under water, 
and that his blood caused the spot in the foam. The 
Quaker, while considering the meaning of this spot, 
began to sing again, — 

“ Not very long before he died. 

The luckless man was still alive.” 

He did not finish his song. 

He heard an extremely soft voice behind him, which 
said, — 

“ Is that you, Rantaine ? Good-day. You have just 
killed a man \” 

He turned. About fifteen paces behind him, in one 
of the passages between the rocks, stood a little man 
holding a revolver in his hand. 

The Quaker answered, — 

“ As you see. Good-day, Sieur Clubin.*' 

The little man started. 

'' You know me ? ” 

‘‘You knew me very well,” replied Rantaine. 


164 


THE TOILERS THE SEA. 


Meanwhile they could hear a sound of oars on the sea. 
It was the approach of the boat which the officer had 
observed. 

Sieur Clubin said in a low tone, as if speaking to 
himself, — 

‘‘ It was done quickly.’' 

What can I do to oblige you ? ” asked Rantaine. 

Oh, a trifling matter ! It is very nearly ten years 
since I saw you. You must have been doing well. How 
are you ? ” 

“Well enough,” answered Rantaine. “ How are 
you ? ” 

“ Very well,” replied Clubin. 

Rantaine advanced a step towards Clubin. 

A httle sharp cHck caught his ear. It was Sieur 
Clubin who was cocking his revolver. 

“ Rantaine, there are about fifteen paces between us. 
It is a nice distance. Remain where you are.” 

“ Very well,” said Rantaine. “ ^^at do you want 
with me ? ” 

“ I ! Oh, I have come to have a chat with you.” 

Rantaine did not offer to move again. Sieur Clubin 
continued, — 

“You assassinated a coast-guardman just now.” 

Rantaine lifted the flap of his hat, and replied, — 

“You have already done me the honour to men- 
tion it.” 

“ Exactly ; but in terms less precise. I said a man : 
I say now, a coast-guardman. The man wore the number 
619. He was the father of a family ; leaves a wife and 
five children.” 

“ That is no doubt correct,” said Rantaine. 

There was a momentary pause. 

“ They are picked men — those coastguard people,” 
continued Clubin ; “ almost all old sailors.” 

“ I have remarked,” said Rantaine, “ that people gen- 
erally do leave a wife and five children.” 

Sieur Clubin continued, — 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


165 


“ Guess how much this revolver cost me ? ” 

“ It is a pretty tool,” said Rantaine. 

“ What do you guess it at ? ” 

“ I should guess it at a good deal.” 

“ It cost me one hundred and forty-four francs.” 

“ You must have bought that,” said Rantaine, at 
the shop in the ruelle Coutanchez.” 

Clubin continued, — 

“ He did not cry out. The fall stopped his voice, no 
doubt.” 

“ Sieur Clubin, there will be a breeze to-night.” 

“ I am the only one in the secret.” 

“ Do you still stay at the Jean Auberge ? ” 

“ Yes ; you are not badly served there.” 

“ I remember getting some excellent sour-krout there.” 

“You must be exceedingly strong, Rantaine. What 
shoulders you have ! I should be sorry to get a tap from 
you. I, on the other hand, when I came into the world, 
looked so spare and sickly that they despaired of rear-, 
ing me.” 

“ They succeeded though ; which was lucky.” 

“ Yes ; I still stay at the Jean Auberge.” 

“ Do you know, Sieur Clubin, how I recognized you ? 
It was from your having recognized me. I said to 
myself, there is nobody like Sieur Clubin for that.” 

And he advanced a step. 

“ Stand back where you were, Rantaine.” 

Rantaine fell back, and said to himself, — 

“ A fellow becomes like a child before one of those 
weapons.” 

Sieur Clubin continued, — 

“ The position of affairs is this : we have on our 
right, in the direction of St. Enogat, at about three hun- 
dred paces from here, another coast-guardman — ^his 
number is 618 — who is still alive ; and on our left, in 
the direction of St. Lunaire — a customs station. That 
makes seven armed men who could be here, if necessary, 
in five minutes. The rock would be surrounded ; the 


i66 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


way hither guarded. Impossible to elude them. There 
is a corpse at the foot of this rock.” 

Rantaine took a sideway glance at the revolver. 

As you say, Rantaine, it is a pretty tool. Perhaps 
it is only loaded with powder ; but what does that 
matter ? A report would be enough to bring an armed 
force — and I have six barrels here.” 

The measured sound of the oars became very distinct. 
The boat was not far off. 

The tall man regarded the little man curiously. Sieur 
Clubin spoke in a voice more and more soft and subdued. 

” Rantaine, the men in the boat which is coming, 
knowing what you did here just now, would lend a hand 
and help to arrest you. You are to pay Captain Zuela 
ten thousand francs for your passage. You would have 
made a better bargain, by the way, with the smugglers 
of Pleinmont ; but they would only have taken you to 
England ; and besides, you cannot risk going to Guernsey, 
where they have the pleasure of knowing you. To 
return, then, to the position of affairs — ^if I nre, you are 
arrested. You are to pay Zuela for your passage ten 
thousand francs. You have already paid him five thou- 
sand in advance. Zuela would keep the five thousand 
and be gone. These are the facts. Rantaine, you have 
managed your masquerading very well. That hat — 
that queer coat — and those gaiters make a wonderful 
change. You forgot the spectacles; but did right to 
let your whiskers grow.” 

Rantaine smiled spasmodically. Clubin continued, — 

‘‘ Rantaine, you have on a pair of American breeches, 
with a double fob. In one side you keep your watch. 
Take care of it.” 

” Thank you, Sieur Clubin.” 

In the other is a little box made of wrought iron, 
which opens and shuts with a spring. It is an old 
sailor’s tobacco-box. Take it out of your popket, and 
throw it over to me.” 

” Why, this is robbery.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


167 


“ You are at liberty to call the coast-guardman.” 

And Clubin fixed his eye on Rantaine. 

“ Stay, Mess Clubin,” said Rantaine, making a slight 
forward movement, and holding out his open hand. 

The title “ Mess ” was a delicate flattery. 

Stay where you are, Rantaine.” 

“ Mess Clubin, let us come to terms. I offer you 
half.” ^ 

Clubin crossed his arms, still showing the barrels of 
his revolver. 

“ Rantaine, what do you take me for ? I am an 
honest man.” 

And he added after a pause, — 

I must have the whole.” 

Rantaine muttered between his teeth, “ This fellow’s 
of a stem sort.” 

The eye of Clubin lighted up, his voice became clear 
and sharp as steel. He cried, — 

I see that you are labouring under a mistake. Rob- 
bery is your name, not mine. My name is Restitution. 
Hark you, Rantaine. Ten years ago you left Guernsey 
one night, taking with you the cash-box of a certain 
partnership concern, containing fifty thousand francs 
which belonged to you, but forgetting to leave behind 
you fifty thousand francs which were the property of 
another. Those fifty thousand francs, the money of 
your partner, the excellent and worthy Mess Lethierry, 
make at present, at compound interest, calculated for 
ten years, eighty thousand six hundred and sixty-six 
francs. You went into a money-changer’s yesterday. 
I’ll give you his name — Rebuchet, in St. Vincent Street. 
You counted out to him seventy-six thousand francs in 
French ^banknotes ; in exchange for which he gave you 
three notes of the Bank of England for one thousand 
pounds sterling each, plus the exchange. You put these 
banknotes in the iron tobacco-box, and the iron tobacco- 
box into your double fob on the right-hand side. On 
the part of Mess Lethierry, I shall be content with that. 


i68 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

I start to-morrow for Guernsey, and intend to hand it 
to him. Rantaine, the three-master lying-to out yonder 
is the Tamaulipas. You have had your luggage put 
aboard there with the other things belonging to the 
crew. You want to leave France. You have your 
reasons. You are going to Arequipa. The boat is 
coming to fetch you. You are awaiting it. It is at 
hand. You can hear it. It depends on me whether you 
go or stay. No more words. Fling me the tobacco-box.” 

Rantaine dipped his hand in the fob, drew out a httle 
box, and threw it to Clubin. It was the iron tobacco- 
box. It fell and rolled at Clubin’s feet. 

Clubin knelt without lowering his gaze ; felt about for 
the box with his left hand, keeping all the while his eyes 
and the six barrels of the revolver fixed upon Rantaine. 

Then he cried, — 

“ Turn your back, my friend.” 

Rantaine turned his back. 

Sieur Clubin put the revolver under one arm, and 
touched the spring of the tobacco-box. The lid flew 
open. 

It contained four banknotes ; three of a thousand 
pounds, and one of ten pounds. 

He folded up the three banknotes of a thousand pounds 
each, replaced them in the iron tobacco-box, shut the 
lid again, and put it in his pocket. 

Then he picked up a stone, wrapped it in the ten- 
pound note, and said, — 

“You may turn round again.” 

Rantaine turned. 

Sieur Clubin continued, — 

“ I told you I would be contented with three thousand 
pounds. Here, I return you ten pounds.” 

And he threw to Rantaine the note enfolding the stone. 

Rantaine, with a movement of his foot, sent the bank- 
note and the stone into the sea. 

“ As you please,” said Clubin. “ You must be rich. 
I am satisfied.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


169 


The noise of oars, which had been continually drawing 
nearer during the dialogue, ceased. They knew by this 
that the boat had arrived at the base of the cliff. 

“ Your vehicle waits below. You can go, Rantaine.” 

Rantaine advanced towards the steps of stones, and 
rapidly disappeared. 

Clubin moved cautiously towards the edge of the 
escarpment, and watched him descending. 

The boat had stopped near the last stage of the rocks, 
at the very spot where the coast-guardman had fallen. 

Still observing Rantaine stepping from stone to stone, 
Clubin muttered, — 

“ A good number 619. He thought himself alone. 
Rantaine thought there were only two there. I alone 
knew that there were three.” 

He perceived at his feet the telescope which had 
dropped from the hands of the coast-guardman. 

The sound of oars was heard again. Rantaine had 
stepped into the boat, and the rowers had pushed out to 
sea. 

When Rantaine was safely in the boat, and the cliff 
was beginning to recede from his eyes, he arose again 
abruptly. His features were convulsed with rage ; he 
clenched his fist and cried, — 

“ Ha ! he is the devil himself ; a villain ! ” 

A few seconds later, Clubin, from the top of the rock, 
while bringing his telescope to bear upon the boat, 
heard distinctly the following words articulated by a 
loud voice, and mingling with the noise of the sea, — 

“ Sieur Clubin, you are an honest man ; but you will 
not be offended if I write to Lethierry to acquaint him 
with this matter ; and we have here in the boat a sailor 
from Guernsey, who is one of the crew of the Tamaulipas ; 
his name is Ahier-Tostevin, and he will return to St. Malo 
on Zuela’s next voyage, to bear testimony to the fact of 
my having returned to you, on Mess Lethierry^s account, 
the sum of three thousand pounds sterling.” 

It was Rantaine’s voice. 


170 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Clubin rarely did things by halves. Motionless as the 
coast-guardman had been, and in the exact same place, 
his eye still at the telescope, he did not lose sight of the 
boat for one moment. He saw it growing less amidst 
the waves ; watched it disappear and reappear, and 
approach the vessel, which was lying-to ; finally he rec- 
ognized the tall figure of Rantaine on the deck of the 
Tamaulipas. 

When the boat was raised, and slung again to the 
davits, the Tamaulipas was in motion once more. The 
land-breeze was fresh, and she spread all her sails. 
Clubin’s glass continued fixed upon her outline growing 
more and more indistinct, until half an hour later, when 
the Tamaulipas had become only a dark shape upon the 
horizon, growing smaller and smaller against the pale 
twilight in the sky. 

IX. 

USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PERSONS WHO EXPECT OR FEAR 
THE ARRIVAL OF LETTERS FROM BEYOND SEA. 

On that evening Sieur Clubin returned late. 

One of the causes of his delay was, that before going 
to his inn, he had paid a visit to the Dinan gate of the 
town, a place where there were several wine-shops. In 
one of these wine-shops, where he was not known, he 
had bought a bottle of brandy, which he placed in the 
pocket of his overcoat, as if he desired to conceal it. 
Then, as the Durande was to start on the following 
morning, he had taken a turn abroad to satisfy himself 
that everything was in order. 

When Sieur Clubin returned to the Jean Auberge, 
there was no one left in the lower room except the old 
sea-captain, M. Gertrais-Gaboureau, who was drinking 
a jug of ale and smoking his pipe. 

M. Gertrais-Gaboureau saluted Sieur Clubin between 
a whiff and a draught of ale. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


171 

‘‘ How d’ye do, Captain Clubin ? ” 

“ Good evening, Captain Gertrais.” 

“ Well, the Tamaulipas is gone.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Clubin, ‘‘ I did not observe.” 

Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau expectorated, and said, — 
“ Zuela has decamped.” 

“ When was that ? ” 

“ This evening.” 

“ Where is he gone ? ” 

‘‘ To the devil.” 

“No doubt ; but where is that ? ” 

“ To Arequipa.” 

“ I knew nothing of it,” said Clubin. 

He added, — 

“ I am going to bed.” 

He lighted his candle, walked towards the door, and 
returned. 

“ Have you ever been at Arequipa, Captain ? ” 

“ Yes ; some years ago.” 

“ Where do they touch on that voyage ? ” 

“ A httle everywhere ; but the Tamaulipas will touch 
nowhere.” 

M. Gertrais-Gaboureau emptied his pipe upon the 
comer of a plate, and continued, — . 

“You know the lugger called the Trojan Horse, and 
that fine three-master, the Trentemouzin, which are gone 
to Cardiff ? I was against their sailing on account of 
the weather. They have returned in a fine state. The 
lugger was laden with turpentine ; she sprang a leak, 
and in working the pumps they pumped up with the water 
all her cargo. As to the three-master, she has suffered 
most above water. Her cutwater, her headrail, the stock 
of her larboard anchor are broken. Her standing 
jibboom is gone clean by the cap. As for the jibshrouds 
and bobstays, go and see what they look like. The 
mizzenmast is not injured, but has had a severe shock. 
All the iron of the bowsprit has given way ; and it is an 
extraordinary fact that, though the bowsprit itscil is 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


not scratched, it is completely stripped. The larboard- 
bow of the vessel is stove in a good three feet square. 
This is what comes of not taking advice.” 

Clubin had placed the candle on the table, and had 
begun to readjust a row of pins which he kept in the 
collar of his overcoat. He continued, — 

“ Didn’t you say. Captain, that the TamauUpas would 
not touch anywhere ? ” 

“ Yes ; she goes direct to Chili.” 

“ In that case, she can send no news of herself on the 
voyage.” 

” I beg your pardon. Captain Clubin. In the first 
place, she can send any letters by vessels she may meet 
sailing for Europe.” 

” That is true.” 

” Then there is the ocean letter-box.” 

” What do you mean by the ocean letter-box ? ” 

” Don’t you know what that is. Captain Clubin ? ” 

” No.” 

When you pass the straits of Magellan ” 

” Well ? ” 

” Snow all round you ; always bad weather ; ngly 
down-easters, and bad seas.” 

” Well ? ” 

” When you have doubled Cape Monmouth ” 

” Well, what next ? ” 

” Then you double Cape Valentine.” 

” And then ? ” 

” Why, then you double Cape Isidore.” 

” And afterwards ? ” 

“You double Point Anne.” 

“ Good. But what is it you call the ocean letter-box ? ” 
“ We are coming to that. Mountains on the right, 
mountains on the left. Penguins and stormy petrels 
all about. A terrible place. Ah ! by Jove, what a 
howling and what cracks you get there ! The hurricane 
wants no help. That’s the place for holding on to the 
sheer-rails ; for reefing topsails. That’s where you take 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 173 

in the mainsail, and fly the jibsail ; or take in the jib- 
sail and try the stormjib. Gusts upon gusts ! And then, 
sometimes four, five, or six days of scudding under bare 
poles. Often only a rag of canvas left. What a dance ! 
Squalls enough to make a three-master skip Hke a flea. 
I saw once a cabin-boy hanging on to the jibboom of an 
English brig, The True Blue, knocked, jibboom and all, 
to ten thousand nothings. Fellows are swept into the 
air there like butterflies. I saw the second mate of 
the Revenue, a pretty schooner, knocked from under the 
forecross-tree, and killed dead. I have had my sheer- 
rails smashed, and come out with all my sails in ribbons. 
Frigates of fifty guns make water like wicker baskets. 
And the damnable coast ! Nothing can be imagined 
more dangerous. Rocks all jagged-edged. You come, 
by-and-by, to Port Famine. There it’s worse and worse. 
The worst seas I ever saw in my life. The devil’s own 
latitudes. All of a sudden you spy the words, painted 
in red, ‘ Post Office.’ ” 

“ \^at do you mean. Captain Gertrais ? ” 

“ I mean, Captain Clubin, that immediately after 
doubling Point Anne you see, on a rock, a hundred feet 
high, a great post with a barrel suspended to the top. 
This barrel is the letter-box. The English sailors must 
needs go and write up there * Post Office.’ What had 
they to do with it ? It is the ocean post office. It isn’t 
the property of that worthy gentleman, the King of 
England. The box is common to all. It belongs to 
every flag. Post Office: there’s a crack-jaw word for 
you. It produces an effect on me as if the devil had 
suddenly offered me a cup of tea. I will tell you now 
how the postal arrangements are carried out. Every 
vessel which passes sends to the post a boat with 
dispatches. A vessel coming from the Atlantic, for 
instance, sends there its letters for Europe ; and a ship 
coming from the Pacific, its letters for New Zealand or 
California. The officer in command of the boat puts his 
packet into the barrel, and^ takes away any packet he 


174 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


finds there. You take charge of these letters, and the 
ship which comes after you takes charge of yours. As 
ships are alwa57S going to and fro, the continent whence 
you come is that to which I am going. I carry your 
letters ; you carry mine. The barrel is made fast to the 
post with a chain. And it rains, snows, and hails ! A 
pretty sea. The imps of Satan fly about on every side. 
The Tamaulipas will pass there. The barrel has a good 
lid with a hinge, but no padlock. You see, a fellow can 
write to his friends this way. • The letters come safely.*’ 

“ It is very curious,” muttered Clubin thoughtfully. 

Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau returned to his bottle of 
ale. 

“ If that vagabond Zuela should write ” (continued 
Clubin aside), “ the scoundrel puts his scrawl into the 
barrel at Magellan, and in four months I have his letter.” 

“ Well, Captain Clubin, do you start to-morrow ? ” 

Clubin, absorbed in a sort of somnambulism, did not 
notice the question ; and Captain Gertrais repeated it. 

Clubin woJ^'^ up. 

“ Of i.ou' se. Captain Gertrais. It is my day. I must 
start to-morrow morning.” 

“If it was my case, I shouldn’t. Captain Clubin. The 
hair of the dog’s coat feels damp. For two nights past 
the sea-birds have been flying wildly round the lanthom 
of the lighthouse. A bad sign. I have a storm-glass, 
too, which gives me a warning. The moon is at her 
second quarter ; it is the maximum of humidity. I 
noticed to-day some pimpernels with their leaves shut, 
and a field of clover with its stalks all stiff. The worms 
come out of the ground to-day ; the flies sting ; the bees 
keep close to their hives ; the sparrows chatter together. 
You can hear the sound of bells from far off. I heard 
to-night the Angelus at St. Lunaire. And then the sun 
set angry. There will be a good fog. to-morrow, mark 
my words. I don’t advise you to put to sea. I dread 
the fog a good deal more than a hurricane. It’s a nasty 
neighbour that.” 


BOOK VI.— THE DRUNKEN STEERS- 
MAN AND THE SOBER CAPTAIN. 


I. 

THE DOUVRES. 

At about five leagues out, in the open sea, to the south 
of Guernsey, opposite Pleinmont Point, and between 
the Channel Islands and St. Malo, there is a group of 
rocks called the Douvres. The spot is dangerous. 

This term Douvres, applied to rocks and cliffs, is very 
common. There is, for example, near the Cotes du Nord, 
a Douvre, on which a lighthouse is now being constructed, 
a dangerous reef ; but one which must not be confounded 
with the rock above referred to. 

The nearest point on the French coast to the Douvres 
is Cape Brehat. The Douvres are a little farther from 
the coast of France than from the nearest of the Channel 
Islands. The distance from Jersey may be pretty 
nearly measured by the extreme length of Jersey. If 
the island of Jersey could be turned round upon 
Corbiere, as upon a hinge, St. Catherine’s Point would 
almost touch the Douvres, at a distance of more than 
four leagues. 

In these civilized regions the wildest rocks are rarely 
desert places. Smugglers are met with at Hagot, custom- 
house men at Binic, Celts at Br4hat, oyster-dredgers at 
Cancale, rabbit-shooters at C4sambre or Caesar’s Island, 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


176 

crab-gatherers at Brecqhou, trawlers at the Minquiers, 
dredgers at Ecr^hou, but no one is ever seen upon the 
Douvres. 

The sea birds alone make their home there. 

No spot in the ocean is more dreaded. The Casquets, 
where it is said the Blanche Nef was lost ; the Bank of 
Calvados ; the Needles in the Isle of Wight ; the Ronesse, 
which makes the coast of Beaulieu so dangerous ; the 
sunken reefs at Preel, which block the entrance to Merquel, 
and which necessitates the red-painted beacon in twenty 
fathoms of water, the treacherous approaches to Etables 
and Plouha ; the two granite Druids to the south of 
Guernsey, the Old Anderlo and the Little Anderlo, the 
Corbiere, the Hanways, the Isle of Ras, associated with 
terror in the proverb : 

“ Si jamais tu passes le Ras, 

Si tu ne meurs, tu trembler as ; ” 

the Mortes-Femmes, the D4route between Guernsey and 
Jersey, the Hardent between the Minquiers and Chousey, 
the Mauvais Cheval between Bouley Bay and Bameville, 
have not so evil a reputation. It would be preferable 
to have to encounter all these dangers, one after the other, 
than the Douvres once. 

In all that perilous sea of the Channel, which is the 
Egean of the West, the Douvres have no equal in their 
terrors, except the Paternoster between Guernsey and 
Sark. 

From the Paternoster, however, it is possible to give a 
signal — a ship in distress there may obtain succour. 
To the north rises Dicard or DTcare Point, and to the 
south Grosnez. From the Douvres you can see nothing. 

Its associations are the storm, the cloud, the wild sea, 
the desolate waste, the uninhabited coast. The blocks 
of granite are hideous and enormous — everywhere per- 
pendicular wall — the severe inhospitality of the abyss. 

It is in the open sea ; the water about is very deep. 
A rock completely isolated like the Douvres attracts and 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


177 


Shelters creatures which shun the haunts of men. It is 
a sort of vast submarine cave of fossil coral branches — 
a drowned labyrinth. There, at a depth to which divers 
would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, 
and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply 
and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are 
devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, 
not created to be seen by human eyes, wander in this 
twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open 
jaws, scales, and claws float about there, quivering, 
growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the 
gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl 
about seeking their prey. 

To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagina- 
tion, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most 
terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous 
to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, 
unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, 
of creation. There, in the awful silence and darkness, 
the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, 
pursue their horrible instincts. 

Forty years ago, two rocks of singular form signalled 
the Douvres from afar to passers on the ocean. They 
were two vertical points, sharp and curved — >their summits 
almost touching each other. They looked like the two 
tusks of an elephant rising out of the sea ; but they were 
tusks, high as tall towers, of an elephant huge as a moun- 
tain. These two natural towers, rising out of the obscure 
home of marine monsters, only left a narrow passage 
between them, where the waves rushed through. This 
passage, tortuous and full of angles, resembled a straggling 
street between high walls. The two twin rocks are called 
the Douvres. There was the Great Douvre and the 
Little Douvre ; one was sixty feet high, the other forty. 
The ebb and flow of the tide had at last worn away part 
of the base of the towers, and a violent equinoctial gale 
on the 26th of October, 1859, overthrew one of them. 
The smaller one, which still remains, is worn and tottering. 


178 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


One of the most singular of the Douvres is a rock 
known as “ The Man.” This still exists. Some fisher- 
man in the last century visiting this spot found on the 
height of the rock a human body. By its side were a 
number of empty sea-shells. A sailor escaped from 
shipwreck had found a refuge there ; had lived some 
time upon rock limpets, and had died. Hence its name 
of “ The Man.” 

The solitudes of the sea are peculiarly dismal. The 
things which pass there seem to have no relation to the 
human race ; their objects are unknown. Such is the 
isolation of the Douvres. All around, as far as eye can 
reach, spreads the vast and restless sea. 


II. 

AN UNEXPECTED FLASK OF BRANDY. 

On the Friday morning, the day after the departure of 
the Tamaulipas, the Durande started again for Guernsey. 

She left St. Malo at nine o’clock. The weather was 
fine ; no haze. Old Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau was 
evidently in his dotage. 

Sieur Clubin’s numerous occupations had decidedly 
been unfavourable to the collection of freight for the 
Durande. He had only taken aboard some packages 
of Parisian articles for the fancy shops of St. Peter’s 
Port ; three cases for the Guernsey hospital, one con- 
taining yellow soap and long candles, and the other 
French shoe leather for soles, and choice Cordovan skins. 
He brought back from his last cargo a case of crushed 
sugar and three chests of congou tea, which the French 
custom-house would not permit to pass. He had em- 
barked very few cattle ; some bullocks only. These 
bullocks were in the hold loosely tethered. 

There were six passengers aboard ; a Guernsey man, 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


179 


two inhabitants of St. Malo, dealers in cattle : a 
“ tourist” — a phrase already in vogue at this period — 
a Parisian citizen, probably travelling on commercial 
affairs, and an American, engaged in distributing Bibles. 

Without reckoning Clubin, the crew of the Durande 
amounted to seven men ; a helmsman, a stoker, a ship’s 
carpenter, and a cook — serving as sailors in case of need 
— two engineers, and a cabin boy. One of the two 
engineers was also a practical mechanic. This man, 
a bold and intelligent Dutch negro, who had originally 
escaped from the sugar plantations of Surinam, was 
named Imbrancam. The negro, Imbrancam, under- 
stood and attended admirably to the engine. In the 
early days of the “ Devil Boat,” his black face, appearing 
now and then at the top of the engine-room stairs, had 
contributed not a little to sustain its diabolical reputation. 

The helmsman, a native of Guernsey, but of a family 
originally from Cotentin, bore the name of Tangrouille. 
The Tangrouilles were an old noble family. 

This was strictly true. The Channel Islands are like 
England, an aristocratic region. Castes exist there still. 
The castes have their peculiar ideas, which are, in fact, 
their protection. These notions of caste are everywhere 
similar — in Hindostan, as in Genhany, nobilitj^ is won 
by the sword ; lost by soiling the hands with labour : 
but preserved by idleness. To do nothing is to live 
nobly ; whoever abstains from work is honoured. A 
trade is fatal. In France, in old times, there was no 
exception to this rule, except in the case of glass manu- 
facturers. Emptying bottles being then one of the 
glories of gentlemen, making them was probably, for 
that reason, not considered dishonourable. In the 
Channel archipelago, as in Great Britain, he who would 
remain noble must contrive to be rich. A working man 
cannot possibly be a gentleman. If he has ever been one, 
he is so no longer. Yonder sailor, perhaps, descends 
from the Knights Bannerets, but is nothing but a sailor. 
Thirty years ago, a real Gorges, who would have had 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


i8u 

rights over the Seigniory of Gorges, confiscated by Philip 
Augustus, gathered seaweed, naked-footed, in the sea. 
A Carteret is a waggoner in Sark. There are at Jersey 
a draper, and at Guernsey a shoemaker, named Gruchy, 
who claim to be Grouchys, and cousins of the Marshal 
of Waterloo. The old registers of the Bishopric of 
Coutances make mention of a Seigniory of Tangroville, 
evidently from Tancarville on the lower Seine, which is 
identical with Montmorency. In the fifteenth century, 
Johan de Heroudeville, archer and dtoffe of the Sire de 
Tangroville, bore behind him “ son corset et ses autres 
harnois” In May 1371, at Pontorson, at the review of 
Bertrand du Guesclin, Monsieur de Tangroville rendered 
his homage as Knight Bachelor. In the Norman islands, 
if a noble falls into poverty he is soon eliminated from 
the order. A mere change of pronunciation is enough. 
Tangroville becomes Tangrouille : and the thing is done. 

This had been the fate of the helmsman of the Durande. 

At the Bordage of St. Peter's Port there is a dealer in 
old iron named Ingrouille, who is probably an Ingroville. 
Under Lewis le Gros the Ingrovllles possessed three 
parishes in the district of Valognes. A certain Abbe 
Trigan has written an Ecclesiastical History of Nor- 
mandy. This chronicler Trigan was the cure of the 
Seigniory of Digoville. The Sire of Digoville, if he had 
sunk to a lower grade, would have been called Digouille. 

Tangrouille, this probable Tancarville, and possible 
Montmorency, had an ancient noble quality, but a grave 
failing for a steersman : he got drunk occasionally. 

Sieur Clubin had obstinately determined to retain him. 
He answered for his conduct to Mess Lethierry. 

Tangrouille the helmsman never left the vessel ; he 
slept aboard. 

On the eve of their departure, when Sieur Clubin came 
at a late hour to inspect the vessel, the steersman was in 
his hammock asleep. 

In the night Tangrouille awoke. It was his nightly 
habit. Every drunkard who is not his own master has 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


i8i 

his secret hiding-place. Tangrouille had his, which he 
called his store. The secret store of Tangrouille was in 
the hold. He had placed it there to put others off the 
scent. He thought it certain that his hiding-place was 
known only to himself. Captain Clubin, being a sober 
man himself, was strict. The little rum or gin which the 
helmsman could conceal from the vigilant eyes of the 
captain, he kept in reserve in this mysterious corner of 
the hold, and nearly every night he had a stolen inter- 
view with the contents of this store. The surveillance 
was rigorous, the orgie was a poor one, and Tangrouille^s 
nightly excesses were generally confined to two or three 
furtive draughts. Sometimes it happened that the store 
was empty. This night Tangrouille had found there an 
unexpected bottle of brandy. His joy was great ; but 
his astonishment greater. From what cloud had it 
fallen ? He could not remember when or how he had 
ever brought it into the ship. He soon, however, con- 
sumed the whole of it ; partly from motives of prudence, 
and partly from a fear that the brandy might be dis- 
covered and seized. The bottle he threw overboard. 
In the morning, when he took the helm, Tangrouille 
exhibited a slight oscillation of the body. 

He steered, however, pretty nearly as usual. 

With regard to Clubin, he had gone, as the reader 
knows, to sleep at the J ean Auberge. 

Clubin always wore, under his shirt, a leathern travel- 
ling belt, in which he kept a reserve of twenty guineas ; 
he took this belt off only at night. Inside the belt was 
his name Clubin,” written by himself on the rough 
leather, with thick lithographer's ink, which is indelible. 

On rising, just before his departure, he put into .this 
girdle the iron box containing the seventy-five thousand 
francs in bank notes ; then, as he was accustomed to do, 
he buckled the belt round his body. 


i 82 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


III. 

CONVERSATIONS INTERRUPTED. 

The Durande started pleasantly. The passengers, as 
soon as their bags and portmanteaus were installed upon 
and under the benches, took that customary survey of 
the vessel which seems indispensable under the circum- 
stances. Two of the passengers — ^the tourist and the 
Parisian — ^had never seen a steam-vessel before, and from 
the moment the paddles began to revolve they stood 
admiring the foam. Then they looked with wonder- 
ment at the smoke. Then they examined one by one, 
and almost piece by piece upon the upper and lower 
deck, all those naval appliances such as rings, grapnels, 
hooks, and bolts, which, with their nice precision and 
adaptation, form a kind of colossal bijouterie — a sort of 
iron jewellery, fantastically gilded with rust by the 
weather. They walked round the little signal gun upon 
the upper deck. “ Chained up like a sporting dog,” 
observed the tourist. “ And covered with a waterproof 
coat to prevent its taking cold,” added the Parisian. 
As they left the land further behind, they indulged in 
the customary observations upon the view of St. Malo. 
One passenger laid down the axiom that the approach 
to a place by sea is always deceptive ; and that at a 
league from the shore, for example, nothing could more 
resemble Ostend than Dunkirk. He completed his series 
of remarks on Dunkirk by the observation that one of its 
two floating lights painted red was called Ruytingen, 
and the other Mardyck. 

St. Malo, meanwhile, grew smaller in the distance, and 
finally disappeared from view. 

The aspect of the sea was a vast calm. The furrow 
left in the water by the vessel was a long double line 
edged with foam, and stretching straight behind them as 
far as the eye could see. 


I'HE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


i«3 

A straight line drawn from St. Malo in France to Exeter 
in England would touch the island of Guernsey. The 
straight line at sea is not always the one chosen. Steam- 
vessels, however, have, to a certain extent, a power of 
following the direct course, denied to sailing ships. 

The wind in co-operation with the sea is a combination 
of forces. A ship is a combination of appliances. Forces 
are machines of infinite power. Machines are forces of 
limited power. That struggle which we call navigation 
is between these two organizations, the one inexhaustible, 
the other intelligent. 

Mind, directing the mechanism, forms the counter- 
balance to the infinite power of the opposing forces. But 
the opposing forces, too, have their organization. The 
elements are conscious of where they go, and what they 
are about. No force is merely blind. It is the function 
of man to keep watch upon these natural agents, and to 
discover their laws. 

While these laws are still in great part undiscovered, 
the struggle continues, and in this struggle navigation, 
by the help of steam, is a perpetual victory won by 
human skill every hour of the day, and upon every point 
of the sea. The admirable feature in steam navigation 
is, that it disciplines the very ship herself. It diminishes 
her obedience to the winds, and increases her docility 
to man. 

The Durande had never worked better at sea than on 
that day. She made her way marvellously. 

Towards eleven o’clock, a fresh breeze blowing from 
the nor’ -nor’ -west, the Durande was off the Minquiers, 
under little steam, keeping her head to the west, on the 
starboard tack, and close up to the wind. The weather 
was still fine and clear. The trawlers, however, were 
making for shore. 

By little and little, as if each one was anxious to get 
into port, the sea became clear of the boats. 

It could not be said that the Durande was keeping 
quite her usual course. The crew gave no thought to 


t84 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


such matters. The confidence in the captain was 
absolute ; yet, perhaps through the fault of the helms- 
man, there was a slight deviation. The Durande ap- 
peared to be making rather towards Jersey than Guernsey. 
A little after eleven the captain rectified the vessel’s 
course, and put her head fair for Guernsey. It was only 
a little time lost, but in short days time lost has its in- 
conveniences. It was a February day, but the sun 
shone brightly. 

Tangrouille, in his half-intoxicated state, had not a 
very sure arm, nor a very firm footing. The result 
was, that the helmsman lurched pretty often, which 
also retarded progress. 

The wind had almost entirely fallen. 

The Guernsey passenger, who had a telescope in his 
hand, brought it to bear from time to time upon a little 
cloud of gray mist, lightly moved by the wind, in the 
extreme western horizon. It resembled a fleecy down 
sprinkled with dust. 

Captain Clubin wore his ordinary austere, Puritan-like 
expression of countenance. He appeared to redouble 
his attention. 

All was peaceful and almost joyous on board the 
Durande. The passengers chatted. It is possible to 
judge of the state of the sea in a passage with the eyes 
closed, by noting the tremolo of the conversation about 
you. The full freedom of mind among the passengers 
answers to the perfect tranquillity of the waters. 

It is impossible, for example, that a conversation like 
the following could take place otherwise than on a very 
calm sea. 

“ Observe that pretty green and red fly.” 

“ It has lost itself out at sea, and is resting on the 
ship.” 

“ Flies do not soon get tired.” 

“No doubt, they are light ; the wind carries 
them.” 

“ An ounce of flies was once weighed, and afterwards 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 185 

counted ; and it Wcis found to comprise no less than six 
thousand two hundred and sixty-eight.” 

The Guernsey passenger with the telescope had ap- 
proached the St. Malo cattle dealers ; and their talk was 
something in this vein : — 

“ The Aubrac bull has a round and thick buttock, 
short legs, and a yellowish hide. He is slow at work by 
reason of the shortness of his legs.” 

“ In that matter the Salers beats the Aubrac.” 

“ I have seen, sir, two beautiful bulls in my life. The 
first has the legs low, the breast thick, the rump full, the 
haunches large, a good length of neck to the udder, 
withers of good height, the skin easy to strip. The 
second had all the signs of good fattening, a thickset 
back, neck and shoulders strong, coat white and brown, 
rump sinking.” 

“ That’s the Cotentin race.” 

“ Yes ; with a slight cross with the Angus or Suffolk 
bull.” 

You may believe it if you please, sir, but I assure 
you in the south they hold shows of donkeys.” 

Shows of donkeys ? ” 

“ Of donkeys, on my honour. And the ugliest are the 
most admired.” 

“ Ha ! it is the same as with the mule shows. The 
ugly ones are considered best.” 

“ Exactly. Take also the Poitevin mares ; large 
belly, thick legs.” 

“ The best mule known is a sort of barrel upon four 
posts.” 

” Beauty in beasts is a different thing from beauty 
in men.” 

And particularly in women.” 

” That is true.” 

“ As for me, I like a woman to be pretty.” 

‘‘ I am more particular about her being well dressed.” 

“ Yes ; neat, clean, and well set off.” 

” Looking just new. A pretty girl ought always to 


i86 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


appear as if she had just been turned out by a jewel- 
ler.” 

“ To return to my bulls ; I saw these two sold at the 
market at Thouars.” 

“ The market at Thouars ; I know it very well. The 
Bonneaus of La Rochelle, and the Babas corn merchants 
at Marans, I don’t know whether you have heard of them 
attending that market.” 

The tourist and the Parisian were conversing with the 
American of the Bibles. 

Sir,” said the tourist, '' I will tell you the tonnage of 
the civilized world. France, 716,000 tons ; Germany, 
1,000,000 ; the United States, 5,000,000 ; England, 
5,500,000 ; add the small vessels. Total 12,904,000 
tons, carried in 145,000 vessels scattered over the waters 
of the globe.” 

The American interrupted. 

” It is the United States, sir, which have 5,500,000.” 

“ I defer,” said the tourist. “ You are an American ? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ I defer still more.” 

There was a pause. The American missionary was 
considering whether this was a case for the offer of a 
Bible. 

Is it true, sir,” asked the tourist, “ that you have a 
passion for nicknames in America, so complete, that you 
confer them upon all your celebrated men, and that you 
call your famous Missouri banker, Thomas Benton, 
‘ Old Lingot.* ” 

Yes ; just as we call Zachary Taylor ' Old Zach.’ ” 

“ And General Harrison, ' Old Tip ; ’ am I right ? and 
General Jackson, ‘ Old Hickory ? ’ ” 

^‘Because Jackson is hard as hickory wood; and 
because Harrison beat the redskins at Tippecanoe” 

“ It is an odd fashion that of yours.” 

It is our custom. We call Van Buren * The Little 
Wizard ; ’ Seward, who introduced the small bank-notes 
^ Little Billy ; ’ and Douglas, the democrat senator from 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


187 

Illinois, who is four feet high and very eloquent, ‘ The 
Little Giant. ^ You may go from Texas to the State of 
Maine without hearing the name of Mr. Cass. They say 
the ' Great Michiganer.” Nor the name of Clay ; they 
say, ‘ The Miller’s boy with the scar.’ Clay is the son of 
a miller.” 

“ I should prefer to say ' Clay ’ or ‘ Cass,’ said the 
Parisian. “ It’s shorter.” 

‘‘ Then you would be out of the fashion. We call 
Corwin, who is the Secretary of the Treasury, ‘ The 
Waggoner-boy ; ’ Daniel Webster, ‘ Black Dan.’ As 
to Winfield Scott, as his first thought after beating the 
English at Chippeway was to sit down to dine, we call 
him ‘ Quick — a basin of soup.’ ” 

The small white mist perceived in the distance had 
become larger. It filled now a segment of fifteen degrees 
above the horizon. It was like a cloud loitering along 
the water for want of wind to stir it. The breeze had 
almost entirely died away. The sea was glassy. Al- 
though it was not yet noon, the sun was becoming pale. 
It lighted but seemed to give no warmth. 

“ I fancy,” said the tourist, “ that we shall have a 
change of weather.” 

” Probably rain,” said the Parisian. 

“ Or fog,” said the American. 

“ In Italy,” remarked the tourist, “ Molfetta is the 
place where there falls the least rain ; and Tolmezzo, 
where there falls the most.” 

At noon according to the usage of the Channel Islands, 
the bell sounded for dinner. Those dined who desired. 
Some passengers had brought with them provisions, and 
were eating merrily on the after-deck Clubin did 
not eat. 

While this eating was going on, the conversations con- 
tinued. 

The Guernsey man, having probably a scent for Bibles, 
approached the American. The latter said to him, — 

“You know this sea ? ” 


i88 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


“ Very well ; I belong to this part.'' 

“ And I, too," said one of the St. Malo men. 

The native of Guernsey followed with a bow and 
continued, — 

“ We are fortunately well out at sea now ; I should not 
have liked a fog when we were oil the Minquiers." 

The American said to the St. Malo man, — 

Islanders are more at home on the sea than the folks 
of the coast." 

“ True ; we coast people are only half dipped in salt 
water." 

What are the Minquiers ? " asked the American. 

The St. Malo man replied, — 

'' They are an ugly reef of rocks." 

“ There are also the Grelets," said the Guernsey man. 

“ Parbleu ! " ejaculated the other. 

" And the Chouas," added the Guernsey man. 

The inhabitant of Sto Malo laughed. 

“ As for that," said he, “ there are the Savages also." 

‘‘ And the Monks," observed the Guernsey man. 

" And the Duck," cried the St. Maloite. 

■'Sir," remarked the inhabitant of Guernsey, “you 
have an answer for everything." 

The tourist interposed with a question, — 

Have we to pass all that legion of rocks ? " 

“ No ; we have left it to the sou’-south-east. It is 
behind us." 

And the Guernsey passenger continued, — 

“ Big and little rocks together, the Grilets have fifty- 
seven peaks." 

“ And the Minquiers forty-eight," said the other. 

The dialogue was now confined to the St. Malo and the 
Guernsey passenger. 

“ It strikes me. Monsieur St. Malo, that there are three 
rocks which you have not included." 

“ I mentioned all." 

“ From the Der6e to the Maitre He." 

“ And Les Maisons ? " 


THE TO. 


OF THE SEA. 1&9 

“ Yes ; seven rocks in (he midst of the Minquiers.’* 

“ I see you know the veiry stones.^* 

“ If I didn’t know the stones, I should not be an in- 
habitant of St. Malo.” 

“ It is amusing to hear French people’s reasonings.” 
The St. Malo man bowed in his turn, and said, — 

The Savages are three rocks.” 

“ And the Monks two.” 

“ And the Duck one.” 

'‘The Duck ; this is only one, of course.” 

“ No ; for the Suarde consists of four rocks.” 

“ What do you mean by the Suarde ? ” asked the 
inhabitant of Guernsey. 

“ We call the Suarde what you call the Chouas.” 

“ It is a queer passage, that between the Chouas and 
the Duck.” 

“ It is impassable except for the birds.” 

“ And the fish.” 

“ Scarcely : in bad weather they give themselves hard 
knocks against the walls.” 

“ There is sand near the Minquiers ? ” 

“ Around the Maisons.” 

“ There are eight rocks visible from Jersey.” 

Visible from the strand of Azette ; that’s correct : 
but not eight ; only seven.” 

“ At low water you can walk about the Minquiers ? ” 
“No doubt ; there would be sand above water.” 

“ And what of the Dirouilles ? ” 

“ The Dirouilles bear no resemblance to the Minquiers.” 
“ They are very dangerous.” 

“ They are near Granville.” 

“I see that you St. Malo people, like us, enjoy sailing 
in these seas.” 

“ Yes,” replied the St. Malo man, “ with the difference 
that we say, ' We have the habit,* you, ' We are fond.’ ” 
“You make good sailors.** 

“ I am myself a cattle merchant.** 

“ Wlio was that famous sailor bom of St. Malo ? ” 


190 


THE TOILERS 


IE SEA. 


“ Surcouf ? 

“ Another ? ” 

“ Duguay-Trouin.^’ 

Here the Parisian commercial man chimed in, — 

“ Duguay-Trouin ? He was captured by the English. 
He was as agreeable as he was brave. A young English 
lady fell in love with him. It was she who procured him 
his liberty.” 

At this moment a voice like thunder was heard crying 
out, “You are drunk, man ! ” 


IV. 

CAPTAIN CLUBIN DISPLAYS ALL HIS GREAT QUALITIES. 

Everybody turned. 

It was the captain calling to the helmsman. 

Sieur Clubin’s tone and manner evidenced that he was 
extremely angry, or that he wished to appear so. 

A well-timed burst of anger sometimes removes re- 
sponsibility, and sometimes shifts it on to other shoulders. 

The captain, standing on the bridge between the two 
paddle-boxes, fixed his eyes on the helmsman. He re- 
peated, between his teeth, “ Drunkard.” The unlucky 
Tangrouille hung his head. 

The fog had made progress. It filled by this time 
nearly one-half of the horizon. It seemed to advance 
from every quarter at the same time. There is some- 
thing in a fog of the nature of a drop of oil upon the 
water. It eifiarged insensibly. The light wind moved 
it onward slowly and silently. By little and little it took 
possession of the ocean. It was coming chiefly from the 
north-west, dead ahead : the ship had it before her prow, 
like a line of cliff moving vast and vague. It rose from 
the sea like a wall There was an exact point where the 
wide waters entered the fog, and were lost to sight. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


191 

' This line of the commencement of the fog was still above 
ijialf a league distant. The interval was visibly growing 
less and less. The Durande made way; the fog made 
’'*^ay also. It was drawing nearer to the vessel, while 
i^Ke vessel was drawing nearer to it. 

Clubin gave the order to put on more steam, and to 
hold off the coast. 

Thus for some time they skirted the edge of the fog ; 
but still it advanced. The vessel, meanwhile, sailed in 
broad sunlight. 

Time was lost in these manoeuvres, which had little 
chance of success. Nightfall comes quickly in February. 
The native of Guernsey was meditating upon the subject 
of this fog. He said to the St. Malo men, — 

It will be thick ! *’ 

“ An ugly sort of weather at sea,” observed one of the 
St. Malo men. 

The other added, — 

“ A kind of thing which spoils a good passage.” 

The Guernsey passenger approached Clubin, and said, — 

“ I’m afraid. Captain, that the fog will catch us.” 

Clubin replied, — 

“ I wished to stay at St. Malo, but I was advised to go.” 

“ By whom ? ” 

“ By some old sailors.” 

“You were certainly right to go,” said the Guernsey 
man. “ Who knows whether there will not be a tempest 
to-morrow ? At this season you may wait and find it 
worse.” 

A few moments later, the Durande entered the fog 
bank. 

The effect was singular. Suddenly those who were on 
the after-deck could not see those forward. A soft 
gray medium divided the ship in two. 

Then the entire vessel passed into the fog. The sun 
became like a dull red moon. Everybody suddenly 
shivered. The passengers put on their overcoats, and 
the sailors their tarpaulins. The sea, almost without a 


192 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

ripple, was the more menacing from its cold tranquillity. 
All was pale and wan. The black funnel and the heavy 
smoke struggled with the dewy mist which enshrouded 
the vessel. 

Dropping to westward was now useless. The captai v 
kept the vessel's head again towards Guernsey, and gave 
orders to put on the steam. 

The Guernsey passenger, hanging about the engine- 
room hatchway, heard the negro Imbrancam talking to 
his engineer comrade. The passenger listened. The 
negro said, — 

“ This morning, in the sun, we were going half steam 
on ; now, in the fog, we put on steam.” 

The Guernsey man returned to Clubin. 

“ Captain Clubin, a look-out is useless ; but have we 
not too much steam on ? ” 

“ What can I do, sir ? We must make up for time 
lost through the fault of that drunkard of a helmsman.” 

“ True, Captain Clubin.” 

And Clubin added, — 

“ I am anxious to arrive. It is foggy enough by day ; 
it would be rather too much at night.” 

The Guernsey man rejoined his St. Malo fellow- 
passengers, and remarked, — 

” We have an excellent captain.” 

At intervals, great waves of mist bore down heavily 
upon them, and blotted out the sun ; which again issued 
out of them pale and sickly. The little that could be 
seen of the heavens resembled the long strips of painted 
sky, dirty and smeared with oil, among the old scenery 
of a theatre. 

The Durande passed close to a cutter which had cast 
anchor for safety. It was the Shealtiel of Guernsey. 
The master of the cutter remarked the high speed of the 
steam-vessel. It struck him also that she was not in her 
exact course. She seemed to him to bear to westward 
too much. The apparition of this vessel under full 
steam in the fog surprised him. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


193 


Towards two o’clock the weather had become so thick 
that the captain was obliged to leave the bridge, and 
plant himself near the steersman. The sun had vanished, 
and all was fog, A sort of ashy darkness surrounded 
the ship. They were navigating in a pale shroud. They 
could see neither sky nor water. 

There was not a breath of wind. 

The can of turpentine suspended under the bridge, 
between the paddle-boxes, did not even oscillate. 

The passengers had become silent. 

The Parisian, however, hummed between his teeth 
the song of Beranger — “ tin jour le bon Dieu s'iveillant'' 

One of the St. Malo passengers addressed him, — 

“ You are from Paris, sir ? ” 

Yes, sir. II mit la Ute d la fenStre” 

“ What do they do in Paris ? ” 

“ Leur planHe a piriy peut-Hre. — ^In Paris, sir, things 
are going on very badly.” 

” Then it’s the same ashore as at sea.” 

” It is true ; we have an abominable fog here.” 

” One which might involve us in misfortunes.” 

The Parisian exclaimed, — 

“ Yes ; and why all these misfortunes in the world ? 
Misfortunes ! What are they sent for, these misfortunes ? 
What use do they serve ? There was the fire at the 
Od^on theatre, and immediately a number of families 
thrown out of employment. Is that just ? I don’t 
know what is your religion, sir, but I am puzzled by all 
this.” 

“ So am I,” said the St. Malo man. 

“ Everything that happens here below,” continued 
the Parisian, ” seems to go wrong. It looks as if Pro- 
vidence, for some reason, no longer watched over the 
world.” 

The St. Malo man scratched the top of his head, like 
one making an effort to understand. The Parisian con- 
tinued, — 

“ Our guardian angel seems to be absent. There 
7 


194 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


ought to be a decree against celestial absenteeism. He 
is at his country-house, and takes no notice of us ; so all 
gets in disorder. It is evident that this guardian is not 
in the government ; he is taking holiday, leaving some 
vicar — some seminarist angel, some wretched creature 
with sparrows’ -wings — to look after affairs.” 

Captain Clubin who had approached the speakers 
during this conversation, laid his hand upon the shoulder 
of the Parisian. 

“ Silence, sir,” he said. “ Keep a watch upon your 
words. We are upon the sea.” 

No one spoke again aloud. 

After a pause of five minutes, the Guernsey man, who 
had heard all this, whispered in the ear of the St. Malo 
passenger, — 

“ A religious man, our captain.” 

It did not rain, but all felt their clothing wet. The 
crew took no heed of the way they were making ; but 
there was increased sense of uneasiness. They seemed 
to have entered into a doleful region. The fog makes a 
deep silence on the sea ; it calms the waves, and stifles 
the wind. In the midst of this silence, the creaking of 
the Durande communicated a strange, indefinable feel- 
ing of melancholy and disquietude. 

They passed no more vessels. If afar off, in the direc- 
tion of Guernsey, or in that of St. Malo, any vessels were 
at sea outside the fog, the Durande, submerged in the 
dense cloud, must have been invisible to them ; while 
her long trail of smoke, attached to nothing, looked like 
a black comet in the pale sky. 

Suddenly Clubin roared out, — 

“ Hang-dog ! you have played us an ugly trick. You 
will have done us some damage before we are out of this. 
You deserve to be put in irons. Get you gone, drunkard ! ” 

And he seized the helm himself. 

The steersman, humbled, shrunk away to take part 
in the duties forward. 

The Guernsey man said, — 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


195 


‘‘ That will save us.” 

The vessel was still making way rapidly. 

Towards three o’clock, the lower part of the fog began 
to clear, and they could see the sea again. 

A mist can only be dispersed by the sun or the wind. 
By the sun is well ; by the wind is not so well. At three 
o’clock in the afternoon, in the month of February, the 
sun is always weak. A return of the wind at this critical 
point in a voyage is not desirable. It is often the fore- 
runner of a hurricane. 

If there was any breeze, however, it was scarcely per- 
ceptible. 

Clubin, with his eye on the binnacle, holding the tiller 
and steering, muttered to himself some words like the 
following, which reached the ears of the passengers, — 

“No time to be lost ; that drunken rascal has retarded 
us.” 

His visage, meanwhile, was absolutely without ex- 
pression. 

The sea was less calm under the mist. A few waves 
were distinguishable. Little patches of light appeared 
on the surface of the water. These luminous patches 
attract the attention of the sailors. They indicate 
openings made by the wind in the overhanging roof of 
fog. The cloud rose a little, and then sank heavier. 
Sometimes the density was perfect. The ship was in- 
volved in a sort of foggy iceberg. At intervals this 
terrible circle opened a little, like a pair of pincers ; 
showed a glimpse of the horizon, and then closed again. 

Meanwhile the Guernsey man, armed with his spyglass, 
was standing like a sentinel in the fore part of the vessel. 

An opening appeared for a moment, and was blotted 
out again. 

The Guernsey man returned alarmed. 

“ Captain Clubin ! ” 

“ What is the matter ? ” 

“ We are steering right upon the Hanways.” 

“You are mistaken/’ said Clubin coldly. 


196 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

The Guernsey man insiste’H. 

I am sure of it.” 

“ Impossible.” 

“ I have just seen the rock in the horizon.” 

“ WTiere ? ” 

” Out yonder.” 

“ It is the open sea there. Impossible.” 

And Clubin kept the vessel’s head to the point indi- 
cated by the passenger. 

The Guernsey man seized his spyglass again. 

A moment later he came running aft again. 

“ Captain.” 

” Well ? ” 

“ Tack about ! ” 

” Why ? ” 

'' I am certain of having seen a very high rock just 
ahead. It is the Great Hanway.” 

“You have seen nothing but a thicker bank of fog.” 

“ It is the Great Hanway. Tack, in the name of 
Heaven ! ” 

Clubin gave the helm a turn. 


V. 

CLUBIN REACHES THE CROWNING-POINT OF GLORY. 

A CRASH was heard. The ripping of a vessel’s side upon 
a sunken reef in open sea is the most dismal sound of 
which man can dream. The Durande’s course was 
stopped short. 

Several passengers were knocked down with the shock, 
and rolled upon the deck. 

The Guernsey man raised his hands to heaven. 

“ We are on the Hanways. I predicted it.” 

A long cry went up from the ship. 

” We are lost.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


197 


The voice of Clubin, dry and short, was heard above all. 

“No one is lost 1 Silence 1 ” 

The black form of Imbrancam, naked down to the 
waist, issued from the hatchway of the engine-room. 

The negro said with self-possession, — 

“ The water is gaining. Captain. The fires will soon 
be out.^' 

The moment was terrible. 

The shook was like that of a suicide. If the disaster 
had been wilfully sought, it could not have been more 
terrible. The Durande had rushed upon her fate as if 
she had attacked the rock itself. A point had pierced 
her sides like a wedge. More than six feet square of 
planking had gone ; the stem was broken, the prow 
smashed, and the gaping hull drank in the sea with a 
horrible gulping noise. It was an entrance for wreck 
and ruin. The rebound was so violent that it had 
shattered the rudder pendants ; the rudder itself hung 
unhinged and flapping. The rock had driven in her 
keel. Round about the vessel nothing was visible ex- 
cept a thick, compact fog, now become sombre. Night 
was gathering fast. 

The Durande plunged forward. It was like the effort 
of a horse pierced through the entrails by the horns of a 
bull. All was over with her. 

Tangrouille was sobered. Nobody is drunk in the 
moment of a shipwreck. He came down to the quarter- 
deck, went up again, and said, — 

“ Captain, the water is gaining rapidly in the hold. 
In ten minutes it will be up to the scupper-holes.*’ 

The passengers ran about bewildered, wringing their 
hands, leaning over the bulwarks, looking down in the 
engine-room, and making every other sort of useless 
movement in their terror. The tourist had fainted. 

Clubin made a sign with his hand, and they were silent. 
He questioned Imbrancam, — 

“ How long will the engines work yet ? ” 

“ Five or six minutes, sir.” 


198 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Then he interrogated the Guernsey passenger, — 

I was at the helm. You saw the rock. On which 
bank of the Hanways are we ? ■* 

“ On the Mauve. Just now, in the opening in the fog, 
I saw it clearly.” 

” If we're on the Mauve,” remarked Clubin, ” we have 
the Great Hanway on the port side, and the Little Han- 
way on the starboard bow ; we are a mile from the shore.” 

The crew and passengers listened, fixing their eyes 
anxiously and attentively on the Captain. 

Lightening the ship would have b^n of no avail, and 
indeed would have been hardly possible. In order to 
throw the cargo overboard, they would have had to open 
the ports and increase the chance of the water entering. 
To cast anchor would have been equally useless : they 
were stuck fast. Besides, with such a bottom for the 
anchor to drag, the chain would probably have fouled. 
The engines not being injured, and being workable while 
the fires were not extinguished — that is to say, for a few 
minutes longer — they could have made an effort, by help 
of steam and her paddles, to turn her astern off the rocks ; 
but if they had succeeded, they must have settled down 
immediately. The rock, indeed, in some degree stopped 
the breach and prevented the entrance of the water. It 
was at least an obstacle ; while the hole once freed, it 
would have been impossible to stop the leak or to work 
the pumps. To snatch a poniard from a wound in the 
heart is instant death to the victim. To free the vessel 
from the rock would have been simply to founder. 

The cattle, on whom the water was gaining in the hold, 
were lowing piteously. 

Clubin issued orders, — 

“ Launch the long boat.” 

Imbrancam and Tangrouihe rushed to execute the 
order. The boat was eased from her fastenings. The 
rest of the crew looked on stupefied. 

** All hands to assist,” cried Clubin. 

This time all obeyed. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


199 


Clubin, self-possessed, continued to issue his orders in 
that old sea dialect, which French sailors of the present 
day would scarcely understand. 

“ Haul in a rope — Get a cable if the capstan does not 
work — Stop heaving — Keep the blocks clear — Lower 
away there — Bring her down stern and bows — Now then, 
all together, lads — Take care she don’t lower stem first 
— ^There’s too much strain on there — Hold the laniard 
of the stock tackle — Stand by there I ” 

The long boat was launched. 

At that instant the Durande’s paddles stopped, and 
the smoke ceased — the fires were drowned. 

The passengers slipped down the ladder, and dropped 
hurriedly into the long boat. Imbrancam lifted the 
fainting tourist, carried him into the boat, and then 
boarded the vessel again. 

The crew made a msh after the passengers — 'the cabin 
boy was knocked down, and the others were trampling 
upon him. 

Imbrancam barred their passage. 

Not a man before the lad,” he said. 

He kept off the sailors with his two black arms, picked 
up the boy, and handed him down to the Guernsey man, 
who was standing upright in the boat. 

The boy saved, Imbrancam made way for the others, 
and said, — 

Pass on ! ” 

Meanwhile Clubin had entered his cabin, and had made 
up a parcel containing the ship’s papers and instruments. 
He took the compass from the binnacle, handed the 
papers and instmments to Imbrancam, and the compass 
to Tangrouille, and said to them, — 

“ Get aboard the boat.” 

They obeyed. The crew had taken their places before 
them. 

” Now,” cried Clubin, ” push off.” 

A cry arose from the long boat. 

” What about yourself, Captain ? ” 


200 


rnt TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


I will remain here.” 

Shipwrecked people have Httle time to dehberate, and 
not much for indulging in tender feeling. Those who 
were in the long boat and in comparative safety, however, 
felt an emotion which was not altogether selfish. All the 
voices shouted together, — 

“ Come with us. Captain.” 

No ; I remain here.” 

The Guernsey man, who had some experience of the 
sea, replied, — 

” Listen to me, Captain. You are wrecked on the 
Hanways. Swimming, you would have only a mile to 
cross to Pleinmont. In a boat you can only land at 
Rocquaine, which is two miles. There are breakers, 
and there is the fog. Our boat will not get to Rocquaine 
in less than two hours. It will be a dark night. The 
sea is rising — ^the wind getting fresh. A squaU is at 
hand. We are now ready to return and bring you off ; 
but if bad weather comes on, that will be out of our 
power. You are lost if you stay there. Come with us.” 

The Parisian chimed in, — 

The long boat is full — too full, it is true — and one 
more will certainly be one too many ; but we are thirteen 
— a bad number for the boat — and it is better to overload 
her with a man than to take an ominous number. Come, 
Captain.” 

Tangrouille added, — 

“ It was all my fault — ^not yours. Captain. It isn’t 
fair for you to be left behind.” 

I have decided to remain here,” said Clubin. The 
vessel must inevitably go to pieces in the tempest to-night. 
I won’t leave her. When the ship is lost, the Captain is 
already dead. People shall not say I didn’t do my duty 
to the end. Tangrouille, I forgive you ! ” 

Then, folding his arms, he cried,- — 

“ Obey orders 1 Let go the rope, and push off.” 

Tbe long boat swayed to and fro. Imbrancam had 
seized the tiller. All the hands which were not rowing 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 201 

were raised towards the Captain; every mouth cried, 
“ Cheers for Captain Clubin.” 

“ An admirable fellow ! ” said the American. 

“ Sir,” replied the Guernsey man, “he is one of the 
worthiest seamen afloat.” 

Tangrouille shed tears. 

“ If I had had the courage,” he said, “ I would have 
stayed with him.” 

The long-boat pushed away, and was lost in the fog. 
Nothing more was visible. 

The beat of the oars grew fainter, and died away. 
Clubin remained alone. 


VI. 

THE INTERIOR OF AN ABYSS SUDDENLY REVEALED. 

When Clubin found himself upon this rock, in the midst 
of the fog and the wide waters, far from all sound of 
human life, left for dead, alone with the tide rising 
around him, and night settling down rapidly, he ex- 
perienced a feeling of profound satisfaction. 

He had succeeded. 

His dream was realized. The acceptance which he 
had drawn upon destiny at so long a date had fallen 
due at last. 

With him, to be abandoned there was, in fact, to be 
saved. 

He was on the Hanways, one mile from the shore ; he 
had about him seventy-five thousand francs. Never 
was shipwreck more scientifically accomplished. Noth- 
ing had failed. It is true, everything had been foreseen. 
From his early years Clubin had had an idea to stake 
his reputation for honesty at life’s gaming-table ; to pass 
as a man of high honour, and to make that reputation his 
fulcrum for other things ; to bide his time, to watch his 


202 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


opportunity ; not to grope about blindly, but to seize 
boldly ; to venture on one great stroke, only one ; and 
to end by sweeping off the stakes, leaving fools behind 
him to gape and wonder. What stupid rogues fail in 
twenty times, he meant to accomplish at the first blow ; 
and while they terminated a career on the gallows, he 
intended to finish with a fortune. The meeting with 
Rantaine had been a new light to him. He had imme^ 
diately laid his plan — to compel Rantaine to disgorge ; 
to frustrate his threatened revelations by disappearing ; 
to make the world believe him dead, the best of all modes 
of concealment ; and for this purpose to wreck the 
Durande. The shipwreck was necessary to his designs. 
Lastly, he had the satisfaction of vanishing, leaving 
behind him a great renown, the crowning point of his 
existence. As he stood meditating on these things amid 
the wreck, Clubin might have been taken for some demon 
in a pleasant mood. 

He had lived a lifetime for the sake of this one minute. 

His whole exterior was expressive of the two words, 

At last.'* A devilish tranquillity reigned in that sallow 
countenance. 

His dull eye, the depth of which generally seemed to 
be impenetrable, became clear and terrible. The inward 
fire of his dark spirit was reflected there. 

Man's inner nature, like that external world about him, 
has its electric phenomena. An idea is like a meteor: 
at the moment of its coming, the confused meditations 
which preceded it open away, and a spark flashes forth. 
Bearing within oneself a power of evil, feeling an inward 
prey, brings to some minds a pleasure which is like a 
sparkle of light. The triumph of an evil purpose 
brightens up their visages. The success of certain 
cunning combinations, the attainment of certain 
cherished objects, the gratification of certain ferocious 
instincts, will manifest themselves in sinister but luminous 
appearances in their eyes. It is like a threatening dawn, 
a gleam of joy drawn out of the heart of a storm. These 


% 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


203 

flashes are generated in the conscience in its states of 
cloud and darkness. 

Some such signs were then exhibiting themselves in 
the pupils of those eyes. They were like nothing else 
that can be seen shining either above or here below. 

All Clubin’s pent-up wickedness found full vent now. 

He gazed into the vast surrounding darkness, and 
indulged in a low, irrepressible laugh, full of sinister 
significance. 

He was rich at last — rich at last ! 

The unknown future of his life was at length unfolding ; 
the problem was solved. 

Clubin had plenty of time before him. The sea was 
rising, and consequently sustained the Durande, and 
even raised her at last a little. The vi^ssel kept firmly 
in its place among the rocks ; there was no danger of 
her foundering. Besides, he determined to give the 
long-boat time to get clear off — to go to the bottom, 
perhaps. Clubin hoped it might. 

Erect upon the deck of the shipwrecked vessel, he 
folded his arms, apparently enjoying that forlorn situation 
in the dark night. 

Hypocrisy had weighed upon this man for thirty years. 
He had been evil itself, yoked with probity for a mate. 
He detested virtue with the feeling of one who has been 
trapped into a hateful match. He had always had a 
wicked premeditation ; from the time when he attained 
manhood he had worn the cold and rigid armour of 
appearances. Underneath this was the demon of self. 
He had lived like a bandit in the disguise of an honest 
citizen. He had been the soft-spoken pirate, the bond- 
slave of honesty. He had been confined in garments 
of innocence, as in oppressive mummy cloths ; had 
worn those angel wings which the devils find so weari- 
some in their fallen state. He had been overloaded 
with public esteem. It is arduous passing for a shining 
light. To preserve a perpetual equilibrium amid these 
difficulties, to think evil, to speak goodness — ^here had 


204 the toilers of THE SEA. I 

been indeed a labour. Such a life of contradictions | 
had been Clubin's fate. It had been his lot — ^not i 
the less onerous because he had chosen it himself — to f 
preserve a good exterior, to be always presentable, to j 
foam in secret, to smile while grinding his teeth. Virtue 
presented itself to his mind as something stifling. He 
had felt, sometimes, as if he could have gnawed those li 
finger-ends which he was compelled to keep before his 
mouth. j 

To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer 1 
unknown tortures. To be premeditating indefinitely a 
diabolical act, to have to assume austerity ; to brood over 
secret infamy seasoned with outward good fame ; to have 
continually to put the world off the scent ; to present a 
perpetual illusion, and never to be one’s self — ^is a burden- 
some task. To be constrained to dip the brush in that j 
dark stuff within, to produce with it a portrait of candour ; 
to fawn, to restrain and suppress one’s self, to be ever on i 
the qui vive — watching without ceasing to mask latent I 
crimes with a face of healthy innocence ; to transform j 
deformity into beauty ; to fashion wickedness into the i 
shape of perfection ; to tickle, as it were, with the i 
point of a dagger, to put sugar with poison, to keep a 
bridle on every gesture and keep a watch over every tone, 
not even to have a countenance of one’s own — ^what can 
be harder, what can be more torturing ? The odiousness 
of hypocrisy is obscurely felt by the hypocrite himself. 
Drinlong perpetually of his own imposture is nauseating. 
The sweetness of tone which cunning gives to scoundrel- 
ism is repugnant to the scoundrel compelled to have it 
ever in the mouth ; and there are moments of disgust 
when villainy seems on the point of vomiting its secret. 
To have to swallow that bitter saliva is horrible. Add 
to this picture his profound pride. There are strange 
moments in the history of such a life, when hypocrisy 
worships itself. There is always an inordinate egotism 
in roguery. The worm has the same mode of gliding 
along as the serpent, and the same manner of raising its 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


205 


head. The treacherous villain is the despot curbed and 
restrained, and only able to attain his ends by resigning 
himself , to play a secondary part. He is summed-up 
littleness capable of enormities. The perfect hypocrite 
is a Titan dwarfed. 

Clubin had a genuine faith that he had been ill-used. 
Why had not he the right to have been born rich ? It 
was from no fault of his that it was otherwise. Deprived 
as he had been of the higher enjoyments of life, why 
had he been forced to labour — ^in other words, to cheat, 
to betray, to destroy ? Why had he been condemned 
to this torture of flattering, cringing, fawning ; to be 
always labouring for men’s respect and friendship, 
and to wear night and day a face which was not his 
own ? To be compelled to dissimulate was in itself to 
submit to a hardship. Men hate those to whom they 
have to lie. But now the disguise was at an end. Clubin 
had taken his revenge. 

On whom ? On all ! On everything ! 

Lethierry had never done him any but good services ; 
so much the greater his spleen. He was revenged upon 
Lethierry. 

He was revenged upon all those in whose presence he 
had felt constraint. It was his turn to be free now. 
Whoever had thought well of him was his enemy. He 
had felt himself their captive 'long enough. 

Now he had broken through his prison walls. His 
escape was accomplished. That which would be re- 
garded as his death would be, in fact, the beginning of 
his life. He was about to begin the world again. The 
true Clubin had stripped off the false. In one hour the 
spell was broken. He had kicked Rantaine into space ; 
overwhelmed Lethierry in ruin, human justice in night, 
and opinion in error. He had cast off all humanity ; 
blotted out the whole world. 

The name of God, that word of three letters, occupied 
his mind but little. 

He had passed for a religious man. What was he now ? 


2o6 the toilers of THE SEA. 

There are secret recesses in hypocrisy ; or rather the 
hypocrite is himself a secret recess. 

When Clubin found himself quite alone, that cavern 
in which his soul had so long lain hidden, was opened. 
He enjoyed a moment of delicious liberty. He revelled 
for that moment in the open air. He gave vent to 
himself in one long breath. 

The depth of evil within him revealed itself in his 
visage. He expanded as it were, with diabolical joy. 
The features of Rantaine by the side of his at that 
moment would have shown like the innocent expression 
of a new-born child. 

What a deliverance was this plucking off of the old 
mask ! His conscience rejoice^ in the sight of its own 
monstrous nakedness, as it stepped forth to take its 
hideous bath of wickedness. The long restraint of men’s 
respect seemed to have given him a peculiar relish for 
infamy. He experienced a certain lascivious enjoyment 
of wickedness. In those frightful moral abysses so 
rarely sounded, such natures find atrocious delights — • 
they are the obscenities of rascality. The long-endured 
insipidity of the false reputation for virtue gave him a 
sort of appetite for shame. In this state of mind men 
disdain their fellows so much that they even long for 
the contempt which marks the ending of their un- 
merited homage. They feel a satisfaction in the freedom 
ol degradation, and cast an eye of enyy at baseness, 
sitting at its ease, clothed in ignominy and shame. Eyes 
that are forced to droop modestly are familiar with these 
stealthy glances at sin. From Messalina to Marie- 
Alacoque the distance is not great. Remember the 
histories of La Cadibre and the nun of Louviers. Clubin, 
too, had worn the veil. Effrontery had always been 
the object of his secret admiration. He envied the 
painted courtesan, and the face of bronze of the pro- 
fessional ruffian. He felt a pride in surpassing her 
in artifices, and a disgust for the trick of passing for 
a saint. He had been the Tantalus of cynicism. And 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


207 


now, upon this rock, in the midst of this solitude, he 
could be frank and open. A bold plunge into wicked- 
ness — ^what a voluptuous sense of relief it brought with 
it. All the delights known to the fallen angels are 
summed up in this ; and Clubin felt them in that moment. 
The long arrears of dissimulations were paid at last. 
Hypocrisy is an investment ; the devil reimburses it. 
Clubin gave himself up to the intoxication of the idea, 
having no longer any eye upon him but that of Heaven. 
He whispered within himself, “ I am a scoundrel,’^ and 
felt profoundly satisfied. 

Never had human conscience experienced such a full 
tide of emotions. 

He was glad to be entirely alone, and yet would not 
have been sorry to have had some one there. He would 
have been pleased to have had a witness of his fiendish 
joy ; gratified to have had opportunity of saying to 
society, “ Thou fool.” 

The solitude, indeed, assured his triumph ; but it 
made it less. 

He was not himself to be spectator of his glory. Even 
to be in the pillory has its satisfaction, for everybody 
can see your infamy. 

To compel the crowd to stand and gape is, in fact, 
an exercise of power. A malefactor standing upon a 
platform in the market-place, with the collar of iron 
around his neck, is master of all the glances which he 
constrains the multitude to turn towards him. There 
is a pedestal on yonder scaffolding. To be there — ^the 
centre of universal observation — ^is not this, too, a’ 
triumph ? To direct the pupil of the public eye, is this 
not another form of supremacy ? For those who worship 
an ideal wickedness, opprobrium is glory. It is a height 
from whence they can look down ; a superiority at least 
of some kind ; a pre-eminence in which they can display 
themselves royally. A gallows standing high in the 
gaze of all the world is not without some analogy with a 
throne. To be exposed is, at least, to be seen and studied. 


208 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Herein we have evidently the key to the wicked reigns 
of history. Nero burning Rome, Louis Quatorze 
treacherously seizing the Palatinate, the Prince Regent 
killing Napoleon slowly, Nicholas strangling Poland 
before the eyes of the civilized world, may have felt 
something akin to Clubin’s joy. Universal execration 
derives a grandeur even from its vastness. 

To be unmasked is a humiliation ; but to unmask 
oneself is a triumph. There is an intoxication in the 
position, an insolent satisfaction in its contempt for 
appearances, a flaunting insolence in the nakedness with 
which it affronts the decencies of life. 

These ideas in a hypocrite appear to be inconsistent, 
but in reaUty are not. All infamy is logical. Honey is 
gall. A character like that of Escobar has some affinity 
with that of the Marquis de Sade. In proof, we have 
L^otade. A hypocrite, being a personification of vice 
complete, includes in himself the two poles of perversity. 
Priest-like on one side, he resembles the courtesan on 
the other. The sex of his diabolical nature is double. 
It engenders and transforms itself. Would you see it 
in its pleasing shape ? Look at it. Would you see it 
horrible ? Turn it round. 

All this multitude of ideas was floating confusedly in 
Clubin's mind. He analyzed them little, but he felt 
them much. 

A whirlwind of flakes of fire borne up from the pit 
of hell into the dark night might fitly represent the 
wild succession of ideas in his soul. 

Clubin remained thus some time pensive and motion- 
less. He looked down upon his cast-off virtues as a 
serpent on its old skin. Everybody had had faith in 
that virtue ; even he himself a httle. 

He laughed again. 

Society would imagine him dead, while he was rich. 
They would believe him drowned, while he was saved. 
What a capital trick to have played ofl on the stupidity 
of the world ! 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


209 


Rantaine, too, was included in that universal stupidity. 
Clubin thought of Rantaine with an unmeasured disdain : 
the disdain of the marten for the tiger. The trick had 
failed with Rantaine ; it had succeeded with him. 
Rantaine had slunk away abashed ; Clubin disappeared 
in triumph. He had substituted himself for Rantaine — • 
stepped between him and his mistress, and carried off 
her favours. 

As to the future, he had no well-settled plan. In the 
iron tobacco-box in his girdle he had the three bank- 
notes. The knowledge of that fact was enough. He 
would change his name. There are plenty of countries 
where sixty thousand francs are equal to six hundred 
thousand. It would be no bad solution to go to one of 
those corners of the world, and live there honestly on 
the money disgorged by that scoundrel Rantaine. To 
speculate, to embark in commerce, to increase his capital, 
to become really a millionaire, that, too, would be no 
bad termination to his career. 

For example. The great trade in coffee from Costa 
Rica was just beginning to be developed. There were 
heaps of gold to be made. He would see. 

It was of little consequence. He had plenty of time 
to think of it. The hardest part of the enterprise was 
accomplished. Stripping Rantaine, and disappearing 
with the wreck of the Durande, were the grand 
achievements. All the rest was for him simple. No 
obstacle henceforth was hkely to stop him. He had 
nothing more to fear. He could reach the shore with 
certainty by swimming. He would land at Pleinmont 
in the darkness ; ascend the cliffs ; go straight to the 
old haunted house ; enter it easily by the help of the 
knotted cord, concealed beforehand in a crevice of the 
rocks ; would find in the house his travelling-bag con- 
taining provisions and dry clothing. There he could 
await his opportunity. He had information. A week 
would not pass without the Spanish smugglers, Blasquito 
probably, touching at Pleinmont. For a few guineas he 


210 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


would obtain a passage, not to Torbay — as he had said to 
Blasco, to confound conjecture, and put him off the scent 
— but to Bilbao or Passages. Thence he could get to 
Vera Cruz or New Orleans. But the moment had come 
for taking to the water. The long-boat was far enough 
by this time. An hour’s swimming was nothing for 
Clubin. The distance of a mile only separated him from 
the land, as he was on the Hanwa57s. 

At this point in Clubin’s meditations a clear opening 
appeared in the fog bank ; the formidable Douvres rocks 
stood before him. 


VII. 

AN UNEXPECTED DENOUEMENT. 

Clubin, haggard, stared straight ahead. 

It was indeed those terrible and solitary rocks. 

It was impossible to mistake their misshapen outlines. 
The two twin Douvres reared their forms aloft, hideously 
revealing the passage between them, like a snare, a cut- 
throat in ambush in the ocean. 

They were quite close to him. The fog, like an artful 
accompUce, had hidden them until now. 

Clubin had mistaken his course in the dense mist. Not- 
withstanding all his pains, he had experienced the fate 
of two other great navigators, Gonzalez, who discovered 
Cape Blanco, and Fernandez, who discovered Cape Verd. 
The fog had bewildered him. It had seemed to him, in 
the confidence of his seamanship, to favour admirably 
the execution of his project ; but it had its perils. In 
veering to westward he had lost his reckoning. The 
Guernsey man, who fancied that he recognized the 
Hanways, had decided his fate, and determined him to 
give the final turn to the tiller. Clubin had never 
doubted that he had steered the vessel on the Hanways. 

The Durande, stove in by one of the sunken rocks of 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 211 

the group, was only separated from the two Douvres by 
a few cables’ lengths. 

At two hundred fathoms further was a massive block 
of granite. Upon the steep sides of this rock were some 
hollows and small projections, which might help a man to 
climb. The square corners of those rude walls at right 
angles indicated the existence of a plateau on the summit. 

It was the height known by the name of “ The Man.” 

“ The Man ” rock rose even higher still than the 
Douvres. Its platform commanded a view over their 
two inaccessible peaks. This platform, crumbling at 
its edges, had every kind of irregularity of shape. No 
place more desolate or more dangerous could be imagined. 
The hardly perceptible waves of the open sea lapped 
gently against the square sides of that dark enormous 
mass ; a sort of resting-place for the vast spectres of the 
sea and darkness. 

All around was calm. Scarcely a breath of air or a 
ripple. The mind guessed darkly the hidden life and 
vastness of the depths beneath that quiet surface. 

Clubin had often seen the Douvres from afar. 

He satisfied himself that he was indeed there. 

He could not doubt it. 

A sudden and hideous change of affairs. The Douvres 
instead of the Hanways. Instead of one mile, five leagues 
of sea ! The Douvres to the solitary shipwrecked sailor 
is the visible and palpable presence of death, the extinc- 
tion of all hope of reaching land. 

Clubin shuddered. He had placed himself voluntarily 
in the jaws of destruction. No other refuge was left to 
him than “ The Man ” rock. It. was probable that a 
tempest would arise in the night, and that the long-boat, 
overloaded as she was, would sink. No news of the 
shipwreck then would come to land. It would not even 
be known that Clubin had been left upon the Douvres. 
No prospect was now before him but death from cold 
and hunger. His seventy-five thousand francs would not 
purchase him a mouthful of bread. All the scaffolding 


212 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


he had built up had brought him only to this snare. He 
alone was the laborious architect of this crowning catas- 
trophe. No resource — no possible escape ; his triumph 
transformed into a fatal precipice. Instead of deliver- 
ance, a prison ; instead of the long prosperous future, 
agony. In the glance of an eye, in the moment which 
the lightning occupies in passing all his construction had 
fallen into ruins. The paradise dreamed of by this 
demon had changed to its true form of a sepulchre. 

Meanwhile there had sprung up a movement in the air. 
The wind was rising. The fog, shaken, driven in, and 
rent asunder, moved towards the horizon in vast shape- 
less masses. As quickly as it had disappeared before, 
the sea became once more visible. 

The cattle, more and more invaded by the waters, 
continued to bellow in the hold. 

Night was approaching, probably bringing with it a 
storm. 

The Durande, filling slowly with the rising tide, swung 
from right to left, then from left to right, and began to 
turn upon the rock as upon a pivot. 

The moment could be foreseen when a wave must move 
her from her fixed position, and probably roll her over 
on her beam-ends. 

It was not even so dark as at the instant of her striking 
the rocks. Though the day was more advanced, it was 
possible to see more clearly. The fog had carried away 
with it some part of the darkness. The west was without 
a cloud. Twilight brings a pale sky. Its vast reflection 
glimmered on the sea. 

The Durande’s bows were lower than her stern. Her 
stern was, in fact, almost out of the water. Clubin 
mounted on the taffrail, and fixed his eyes on the horizon. 

It is the nature of hypocrisy to be sanguine. The 
hypocrite is one who waits his opportunity. Hypocrisy 
is nothing, in fact, but a horrible hopefulness ; the very 
foundation of its revolting falsehood is composed of that 
virtue transformed into a vice. 


213 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

Strange contradiction. There is a certain trustfulness 
in hypocrisy. The hypocrite confides in some power, 
unrevealed even to himself, which permits the course of 
evil. 

Clubin looked far and wide over the ocean. 

The position was desperate, but that evil spirit did not 
yet despair. 

He knew that after the fog, vessels that had been 
lying-to or riding at anchor would resume their course ; 
and he thought that perhaps one would pass within the 
horizon. 

And, as he had anticipated, a sail appeared. 

She was coming from the east and steering towards 
the west. 

As it approached the cut of the vessel became visible. 
It had but one mast, and was schooner rigged. Her 
bowsprit was almost horizontal. It was a cutter. 

Before a half-hour she must pass not very far from the 
Douvres. 

Clubin said within himself, “ I am saved I ” 

In a moment like this a man thinks at first of nothing 
but his life. 

The cutter was probably a strange craft. Might it not 
be one of the smuggling vessels on its way to Pleinmont ? 
It might even be Blasquito himself. In that case, 
not only life, but fortune, would be saved ; and the 
accident of the Douvres, by hastening the conclusion, 
by dispensing with the necessity for concealment in the 
haunted house, and by bringing the adventure to a 
denouement at sea, would be turned into a happy 
incident. 

All his original confidence of success returned fanati- 
cally to his sombre mind. 

It is remarkable how easily knaves are persuaded that 
they deserve to succeed. 

There was but one course to take. 

The Durande, entangled among the rocks, necessarily 
mingled her outline with them, and confounded herself 


214 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


with their irregular shapes, among which she formed 
only one more mass of lines. Thus become indistinct 
and lost, she would not suffice, in the little light which 
remained, to attract the attention of the crew of the 
vessel which was approaching. 

But a human form standing up, black against the pale 
twilight of the sky, upon “ the Man Rock,'' and making 
signs of distress, would doubtless be perceived, and the 
cutter would then send a boat to take the shipwrecked 
man aboard. 

“ The Man ” was only two hundred fathoms off. To 
reach it by swimming was simple, to climb it easy. 

There was not a minute to lose. 

The bows of the Durande being low between the rocks, 
it was from the height of the poop where Clubin stood 
that he had to jump into the sea. He began by taking 
a sounding, and discovered that there was great depth 
just under the stern of the wrecked vessel. The micro- 
scopic shells of foraminifera which the adhesive matter 
on the lead-line brought up were intact, indicating the 
presence of very hollow caves under the rocks, in which 
the water was tranquil, however great the agitation of 
the surface. 

He undressed, leaving his clothing on the deck. He 
knew that he would be able to get clothing when aboard 
the cutter. 

He retained nothing but his leather belt. 

As soon as he was stripped he placed his hand upon this 
belt, buckled it more securely, felt for the iron tobacco- 
box, took a rapid survey in the direction which he would 
have to follow among the breakers and the waves to gain 
“ the Man Rock ; ” then precipitating himself head first, 
he plunged into the sea. 

As he dived from a height, he plunged heavily. 

He sank deep in the water, touched the bottom, 
skirted for a moment the submarine rocks, then struck 
out to regain the surface. 

At that moment he felt himself seized bv one foot. 


BOOK VII.— THE DANGER OF OPEN- 
ING A BOOK AT RANDOM. 


L 

THE PEARL AT THE FOOT OF A PRECIPICE. 

A FEW moments after his short colloquy with Sieur 
Landoys, Gilliatt was at St. Sampson. 

He was troubled, even anxious. What could it be 
that had happened ? 

There was a murmur in St. Sampson like that of a 
startled hive. Everybody was at his door. The women 
were talking loud. There were people who seemed re- 
lating some occurrence and who were gesticulating. A 
group had gathered around them. The words could be 
heard, “ What a misfortune ! ” Some faces wore a smile. 

Gilliatt interrogated no one. It was not in his nature 
to ask questions. He was, moreover, too much moved 
to speak to strangers. He had no confidence in rumours. 
He preferred to go direct to the Bravees. 

His anxiety was so great that he was not even deterred 
from entering the house. 

The door of the great lower room opening upon the 
Quay, moreover, stood quite open. There was a swarm 
of men and women on the threshold. Everybody was 
going in, and Gilliatt went with the rest. 

Entering he found Sieur Landoys standing near the 
doorposts. 


216 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA.* 

“You have heard, no doubt, ot this event ? 

“ No.;^ 

“ I did not like to call it out to you on the road. It 
makes me like a bird of evil omen.*' 

“ What has happened ? ” 

“ The Durande is lost.’* 

There was a crowd in the great room. 

The various groups spoke low, like people in a sick- 
chamber. 

The assemblage, which consisted of neighbours, the 
first comers, curious to learn the news, huddled together 
near the door with a sort of timidity, leaving clear the 
bottom of the room, where appeared Deruchette sitting 
and in tears. Mess Lethierry stood beside her. 

His back was against the wall at the end of the room. 
His sailor’s cap came down over his eyebrows. A lock 
of gray hair hung upon his cheek. He said nothing. 
His arms were motionless ; he seemed scarcely to breathe. 
He had the look of something hfeless placed against the 
wall. 

It was easy to see in his aspect a man whose life had 
been crushed within him. The Durande being gone, 
Lethierry had no longer any object in his existence. He 
had had a being on the sea ; that being had suddenly 
foundered. What could he do now ? Rise every morn- 
ing : go to sleep every night. Never more to await the 
coming of the Durande ; to see her get under way, or 
steer again into the port. What was a remainder of 
existence without object ? To drink, to eat, and then ? 
He had crowned the labours of his life by a master- 
piece : won by his devotion a new step in civilization. 
The step was lost ; the masterpiece destroyed. To live 
a few vacant years longer ! where would be the good ? 
Henceforth nothing was left for him to do. At his age 
men do not begin life anew. Besides, he was ruined. 
Poor old man ! 

Deruchette, sitting near him on a chair and weeping, 
held one of Mess Lethierry’s hands in hers. Her hands 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 217 

were joined: his hand was clenched fast. It was the 
si^ of the shade of difference in their two sorrows. In 
joined hands there is still some token of hope, in the 
clenched fist none. 

Mess Lethierry gave up his arm to her, and let her do 
with it what she pleased. He was passive. Struck 
down by a thunderbolt, he had scarcely a spark of life 
left within him. 

There is a degree of overwhelmment which abstracts 
the mind^ entirely from its fellowship with man. The 
forms which come and go within your room become con- 
fused and indistinct. They pass by, even touch you, 
but never really come near you. You are far away ; 
inaccessible to them, as they to you. The intensities 
of joy and despair differ in this. In despair, we take 
cognizance of the world only as something dim and afar 
off : we are insensible to the things before our eyes ; 
we lose the feeling of our own existence. It is in vain, 
at such times, that we are flesh and blood ; our con- 
sciousness of life is none the more real : we are become, 
even to ourselves, nothing but a dream. 

Mess Lethierry's gaze indicated that he had reached 
this state of absorption. 

The various groups were whispering together. They 
exchanged information as far as they had gathered it. 
This was the substance of their news. 

The Durande had been wrecked the day before in the 
fog on the Douvres, about an hour before simset. With 
the exception of the captain, who refused to leave his 
vessel, the crew and passengers had all escaped in the 
long boat. A squall from the south-west springing up 
as the fog had cleared, had almost wrecked them a second 
time, and had carried them out to sea beyond Guernsey. 
In the night they had had the good fortune to meet with 
the Cashmere, which had taken them aboard and landed 
them at St Peter’s Port. The disaster was entirely the 
fault of the steersman Tangrouille, who was in prison. 
Clubin had behaved nobly. 


2I8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The pilots, who had mustered in great force, pro- 
nounced the words “ The Douvres ” with a peculiar 
emphasis. “ A dreary half-way house, that,” said one. 

A compass and a bundle of registers and memorandum- 
books lay on the table ; they were doubtless the compass 
of the Durande and the ship’s papers, handed by Clubin 
to Imbrancam and Tangrouille at the moment of the 
departure of the long boat. They were the evidences 
of the magnificent self-abnegation of that man who had i 
busied himself with saving these documents even in the | 
presence of death itself — a little incident full of moral j 
grandeur ; an instance of sublime self-forgetfulness | 
never to be forgotten. I 

They were unanimous in their admiration of Clubin ; 
unanimous also in believing him to be saved after all. 
The Shealtiel cutter had arrived some hours after the ! 
Cashmere. It was this vessel which had brought the 
last items of intelligence. She had passed four-and- | 
twenty hours in the same waters as the Durande. She | 
had lain- to in the fog, and tacked about during the. squall, j 
The captain of the Shealtiel was present among the t 
company. 

This captain had just finished his narrative to 
Lethierry as Gilliatt entered. The narrative was a true 
one. Towards the morning, the storm having abated, 
and the wind becoming manageable, the captain of the 
Shealtiel had heard the lowing of oxen in the open sea. 
This rural sound in the midst of the waves had naturally 
startled him. He steered in in that direction, and per- 
ceived the Durande among the Douvres. The sea had 
sufficiently subsided for him to approach. He hailed 
the wreck ; the bellowing of the cattle was the sole reply. 
The captain of the Shealtiel was confident that there was 
no one aboard the Durande. The wreck still held to- 
gether well, and notwithstanding the violence of the squall, | 
Clubin could have passed the night there. He was not j 
the man to leave go his hold very easily. He was not ' 
there, however ; and therefore he must have been rescued. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


219 


It was certain that several sloops and luggers, from 
Granville and St Malo, must, after laying-to in the fog on 
the previous evening, have passed pretty near the rocks. 
It was evident that one of these had taken Clubin aboard. 
It was to be remembered that the long boat of the Durande 
was full when it left the unlucky vessel ; that it w;is 
certain to encounter great risks ; that another man 
aboard would have overloaded her, and perhaps caused 
her to founder ; and that these circumstances had no 
doubt weighed with Clubin in coming to his determina- 
tion to remain on the wreck. His duty, however, once 
fulfilled, and a vessel at hand, Clubin assuredly would not 
have scrupled to avail himself of its aid. A hero is not 
necessarily an idiot. The idea of a suicide was absurd 
in connection with a man of Clubin’s irreproachable 
character. The culprit, too, was Tan^ouille, not Clubin. 
All this was conclusive. The captain of the Shcaltiel 
was evidently right, and everybody expected to see 
Clubin reappear very shortly. There was a project 
abroad to carry him through &e tovra in triumph. 

Two things appeared certain from the narrative of 
the captain : Clubin was saved, the Durande lost 

As regarded the Durande, there was nothing for it but 
to accept the fact ; the catastrophe was irremediable. 
The captain of the Shealtiel had witnessed the last 
moments of the wreck. The sharp rock on which the 
vessel had been, as it were, nailed, had held her fast 
during the night, and resisted the shock of the tempest 
as if reluctant to part with its prey ; but in the morning, 
at the moment when the captain of the Shealtiel had con- 
vinced himself that there was no one aboard to be saved, 
and was about to wear off again, one of those seas which 
are like the last angry blows of a tempest had struck her. 
The wave lifted her violently from her plac^, and v^dth 
the swiftness and directness of an arrow from a bow had 
thrown her against the two Douvres Rocks. ‘*An infernal 
crash was heard,” said the captain. The vessel, lifted 
by the wave to a certain height, had plunged between 


220 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the two rocks up to her midship frame. She had stuck 
fast again, but more firmly than on the submarine rocks. 
She must have remained there suspended, and exposed 
to every wind and sea. 

The Durande, according to the statements of the crew 
of the Shealtiel, was already three parts broken up. She 
would evidently have foundered during the night, if the i 
rocks had not kept her up. The captain of the Shealtiel \ 
had watched her a long time with his spygla^. He gave, ! 
with naval precision, the details of her disaster. The 
starboard quarter beaten in, the masts maimed, the sails 
blown from the bolt-ropes, the shrouds tom away, the j 
cabin sky-lights smashed by the falling of one of the 
booms, the dome of the cuddy-house beaten in, the ! 
chocks of the long boat stmck away, the round-house ! 
overturned, the hinges of the rudder broken, the tmsses 
wrenched away, the quarter-cloths demolished, the bits 
gone, the cross-beam destroyed, the shear-rails knocked 
off, the stem-post broken. As to the parts of the cargo 
made fast before the foremast, all destroyed, made a ! 
clean sweep of, gone to ten thousand shivers, with top \ 
ropes, iron pulleys, and chains. The Durande had broken 
her back ; the sea now must break her up piecemeal. In j 
a few days there would be nothing of her remaining. I 

It appeared that the engine was scarcely injured by all ! 
these ravages — -a remarkable fact, and one which proved 
its excellence. The captain of the Shealtiel thought he | 
could affirm that the crank had received no serious injury. 
The vessel’s masts had given way, but the funnel had 
resisted everything. Only the iron guards of the captain’s | 
gangway were twisted ; the paddle boxes had suffered, 
the frames were bmised, but the paddles had not a float I, 
missing. The machinery was intact. Such was the 1 
conviction of the captain of the Shealtiel. Imbrancam, I 
the engineer, who was among the crowd, had the same t 
conviction. The negro, more intelligent than many of i 
his white companions, was proud of his engines. He j 
lifted up his arms, opening the ten fingers of his black | 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


221 


hands, and said to Lethierry, as he sat there silent, 
“ Master, the machinery is alive still ! ” 

The safety of Clubin seeming certain, and the hull of the 
Durande being already sacrificed, the engines became 
the topic of conversation among the crowd. They took 
an interest in it as in a hving thing. They felt a delight 
in praising its good qualities. That’s what I call a 
well-built machine,” said a French sailor. ” Something 
like a good one,” cried a Guernsey fisherman. ” She 
must have some good stuff in her,” said the captain of the 
Shealtiel, ” to come out of that affair with only a few 
scratches.” 

By degrees the machinery of the Durande became the 
absorbing object of their thoughts. Opinions were warm 
Tor and against. It had its enemies and its friends. 
More than one who possessed a good old sailing cutter, 
and who hoped to get a share of the business of the 
Durande, was not sorry to find that the Douvres rock 
had disposed of the new invention. The whispering 
became louder. The discussion grew noisy, though the 
hubbub was evidently a little restrained ; and now and 
then there was a simultaneous lowering of voices out of 
respect to Lethierry’s death-like silence. 

The result of the colloquy, so obstinately maintained 
on all sides, was as follows : — 

The engines were the vital part of the vessel. To 
rescue the Durande w^ impossible ; but the machinery 
might still be saved. These engines were unique. To 
construct others similar, the money was wanting ; but 
to find the artificer would have been still more difficult. 
It was remembered that the constructor of the machinery 
was dead. It had cost forty thousand francs. No 
one would risk again such a sum upon such a chance : 
particularly as it was now discovered that steamboats 
could be lost like other vessels. The accident of the 
Durande destroyed the prestige of all her previous 
success. Still, it was deplorable to think that at that 
very moment this valuable mechanism was still entire 


222 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

and in good condition, and that in five or six da57S it 
would probably go to pieces, like the vessel herself. 

As long as this existed, it might almost be said that there 
was no shipwreck. The loss of the engines was alone 
irreparable. To save the machinery would be almost 
to repair the disaster. 

Save the machinery ! It was easy to talk of it ; but 
who would undertake to do it ? Was it possible, even ? 

To scheme and to execute are two different things ; as 
different as to dream and to do. Now if ever a dream 
had appeared wild and impracticable, it was that of 
saving the engines then embedded between the Douvres. 
The idea of sending a ship and a crew to work upon those 
rocks was absurd. It could not be thought of. It was 
the season of heavy seas. In the first gale the chains 
of the anchors would be worn away and snapped upon 
the submarine peaks, and the vessel must be shattered 
on the rocks. That would be to send a second ship- 
wreck to the relief of the first. On the miserable narrow i 
height where the legend of the place described the ship- 
wrecked sailor as having perished of hunger, there was 
scarcely room for one person. To save the engines, ^ 
therefore, it would be necessary for a man to go to the 
Douvres, to be alone in that sea, alone in that desert, 
alone at five leagues from the coast, alone in that region ; 
of terrors, alone for entire weeks, alone in the presence of : 
dangers foreseen and unforeseen — ^without supplies in j 
the face of hunger and nakedness, without succour in | 
the time of distress, without token of human life around | 
him save the bleached bones of the miserable being who j 
had perished there in his misery, without companionship j 
save that of death. And besides, how was it possible to 1 
extricate the machinery ? It would require not only a 
sailor, but an engineer ; and for what trials must he not 
prepare. The man who would attempt such a task must 
be more than a hero ; he must be a madman : for in 
certain enterprises, in which superhuman power appears 
necessary, there is a sort of madness which is more potent 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


223 


than courage. And after all, would it not be a folly 
to immolate oneself for a mass of rusted iron ? No : 
it was certain that nobody would undertake to go to the 
Douvres on such an errand. The engine must be aban- 
doned like the rest. The engineer for such a task would 
assuredly not be forthcoming. Where, indeed, should 
they look for such a man ? 

All this, or similar observations, formed the substance 
of the confused conversations of the crowd. 

The captain of the Shealtiel, who had been a pilot, 
summed up the views of all by exclaiming aloud, — 

“ No ; it is all over. The man does not exist who 
could go there and rescue the machinery of the Durande.” 

“ If I don’t go,” said Imbrancam, ” it is because 
nobody could do it.” 

The captain of the Shealtiel shook his left hand in the 
air with that sudden movement which expresses a con- 
viction that a thing is impossible. 

“If he existed — continued the captain. 

D4ruchette turned her head impulsively, and in- 
terrupted. 

“ I would marry him,” she said innocently. 

There was a pause. 

A man made his way out of the crowd, and standing 
before her, pale and anxious, said, — 

“You would marry him. Miss Deruche tte ? ” 

It was Gilliatt. 

All eyes were turned towards him. Mess Lethierry 
had just before stood upright, and gazed about him. 
His eyes glittered with a strange light. 

He took off his sailor’s cap, and threw it on the ground ; 
then looked solemnly before him, and without seeing 
any of the persons present, said, — ■ 

“ Deruchette should be his. I pledge myself to it 
in God’s name.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


^^4 


II. 

MUCH ASTONISHMENT ON THE WESTERN COAST. 

The full moon rose at ten o^clock on the following night ; 
but however fine the night, however favourable the wind 
and sea, no fisherman thought of going out that evening 
either from Hogue la Perre, or Bourdeaux harbour, or 
Houmet Benet, or Platon, or Port Grat, or Vazon Bay, 
or Perrelle Bay, or Pezeries, or the Tielles or Saints’ Bay, 
or Little Bo, or any other port or little harbour in 
Guernsey ; and the reason was very simple. A cq^ 
had been heard to crow at noonday. ^ 

When the cock is heard to crow at an extraordinary 
hour, fishing is suspended. 

At dusk on that evening, however, a fisherman return- 
ing to Omptolle, met with a remarkable adventure. 
On the height above Houmet Paradis, beyond the Two 
Brayes and the Two Grunes, stands to the left the beacon 
of the Plattes Toug^res, representing a tub reversed ; and 
to the right, the beacon of St. Sampson, representing 
the face of a man. Between these two, the fisherman 
thought that he perceived for the first time a third 
beacon. What could be the meaning of this beacon ? 
When had it been erected on that point ? What shoal 
did it indicate ? The beacon responded immediately 
to these interrogations. It moved ; it was a mast. The 
astonishment of the fisherman did not diminish. A 
beacon would have been remarkable ; a mast was still 
more so : it could not be a fishing-boat. When every- 
body else was returning, some boat was going out. Who 
could it be ? and what was he about ? 

Ten minutes later the vessel, moving slowly, came 
within a short distance of the Omptolle fisherman. He 
did not reco^ize it. He heard the sound of rowing : 
there were evidently only two oars. There was probably, 
then, only one man aboard. The wind was northerly. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


225 


The man, therefore, was evidently paddling along in 
order to take the wind off Point Fontenelle. There 
he would probably take to his sails. He intended then 
I to double the Ancresse and Mount Crevel. What could 
that mean ? 

The vessel passed, the fisherman returned home. On 
that same ^ night, at different hours and at different 
points, various persons scattered and isolated on the 
western coast of Guernsey observed certain facts. 

As the Omptolle fisherman was mooring his bark, a 
carter of seaweed about half a mile off, whipping his 
horses along the lonely road from the Clotures near the 
Druid stones, and in the neighbourhood of the Martello 
Towers 6 and 7, saw far off at sea, in a part little fre- 
quented, because it requires much knowledge of the 
waters, and in the direction of North Rock and the 
Jablonneuse, a sail being hoisted. He paid little atten- 
tion to the circumstance, not being a seaman, but a 
carter of seaweed. 

Half an hour had perhaps elapsed since the carter had 
perceived this vessel, when a plasterer returning from 
his work in the town, and passing round Pelee Pool, 
found himself suddenly opposite a vessel sailing boldly 
among the rocks of the Quenon, the Rousse de Mer, and 
the Gripe de Rousse. The night was dark, but the sky 
was light over the sea — an effect common enough — and 
! he could distinguish a great distance in every direction. 

There was no sail visible except this vessel. 

, A little lower, a gatherer of cray-fish, preparing his 
fish wells on the beach which separates Port Soif from 
the Port Enfer, was puzzled to make out the movements 
of a vessel between the Boue Corneille and the Moubrette. 
The man must have been a good pilot, and in great haste 
to reach some destination, to risk his boat there. 

Just as eight o'clock was striking at the Catel, the 
tavernkeeper at Cobo Bay observed with astonishment 
a sail out beyond the Boue du Jardin and the Grunettes, 
and very near the Susanne and the Western Grunes. 


226 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Not far from Cobo Bay, upon the solitary point of the 
Houmet of Vason Bay, two lovers were lingering, hesitat- 
ing before they parted for the night. The young woman 
addressed the young man with the words, “ I am not 
going because I don’t care to stay with you : I’ve a great 
deal to do.” Their farewell kiss was interrupted by a 
good-sized sailing boat which passed very near them, 
making for the direction of the Messellettes. 

Monsieur le Pejnre des Norgiots, an inhabitant of 
Cotillon Pipet, was engaged about nine o’clock in the 
evening in examining a hole made by some trespassers 
in the hedge of his property called La J ennerotte, and his 
“ friquet planted with trees.” Even while ascertaining 
the amount of the damage, he could not help observing 
a fishing-boat audaciously making its way round the 
Crocq' Point at that hour of night. 

On the morrow of a tempest, when there is always 
some agitation upon the sea, that route was extremely 
unsafe. It was rash to choose it, at least, unless the 
steersman knew all the channels by heart. 

At half-past nine o’clock, at L’Equerrier, a trawler 
carrying home his net stopped for a time to observe 
between Colombelle and the Soufleresse something 
which looked like a boat. The boat was in a dangerous 
position. Sudden gusts of wind of a very dangerous 
kind are very common in that spot. The Soufleresse, 
or Blower, derives its name from the sudden gusts of 
wind which it seems to direct upon the vessels which 
by rare chance find their way thither. 

At the moment when the moon was rising, the tide 
being high and the sea being quiet, in the httle strait 
of Li-Hou, the solitary keeper of the island of Li-Hou 
was considerably startled. A long black object slowly 
p^sed between the moon and him. This dark form, 
high and narrow, resembled a winding-sheet spread out 
and moving. It glided along the hne of the top of the 
wall formed by the ridges of rock. The keeper of Li-Hou 
fancied that he had beheld the Black Lady. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


227 


The White Lady inhabits the Tau de Fez d’Amont ; 
the Gray Lady, the Tau de Fez d’Aval ; the Red Lady, 
the Silleuse, to the north of the Marquis Bank ; and 
the Black Lady, the Grand Etacre, to the west of Li- 
Houmet. At night, when the moon shines, these ladies 
stalk abroad, and sometimes meet. 

That dark form might undoubtedly be a sail. The 
long groups of rocks on which she appeared to be walking 
might in fact be concealing the hull of a bark navigating 
behind them, and allowing only her sail to be seen. 
But the keeper asked himself, what bark would dare, 
at that hour, to venture herself between Li-Hou and the 
P6cheresses, and the Anguillieres and Leree Point ? 
And what object could she have ? It seemed to him 
much more probable that it was the Black Lady. 

As the moon was passing the clock-tower of St. Peter 
in the Wood, the sergeant at Castle Rocquaine, while in 
the act of raising the drawbridge of the castle, distin- 
guished at the end of the bay beyond the Haute Canee, 
but nearer than the Sambule, a sailing-vessel which 
seemed to be steadily dropping down from north to 
south. 

On the southern coast of Guernsey behind Pleinmont, 
in the curve of a bay composed entirely of precipices and 
rocky walls rising peak-shaped from the sea, there is a 
singular landing-place, to which a French gentleman, 
a resident of the island since 1855, has given the name 
of The Port on the Fourth Floor, a name now gener- 
ally adopted. This port, or landing-place, which was 
then called the Moie, is a rocky plateau half formed 
by nature, half by art, raised about forty feet above 
the level of the waves, and communicating with the 
water by two large beams laid parallel in the form of 
an inclined plane. The fishing-vessels are hoisted up 
there by chains and pulleys from the sea, and are let 
down again in the same way along these beams, which 
are like two rails. For the fishermen there is a ladder. 
The port was, at the time of our story, much frequented 


228 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


by the smugglers. Being difficult of access, it was well 
suited to their purposes. 

Towards eleven o’clock, some smugglers — ^perhaps the 
same upon whose aid Clubin had counted — stood with 
their bales of goods on the summit of this platform of the 
Moie. A smuggler is necessarily a man on the look out ; 
it is part of his business to watch. They were astonished 
to perceive a sail suddenly make its appearance beyond 
the dusky outline of Cape Pleinmont. It was moonlight. 
The smugglers observed the sail narrowly, suspecting 
that it might be some coast-guard cutter about to lie 
in ambush behind the Great Hanway. But the sail left 
the Hanways behind, passed to the north-west of the 
Boue Blondel, and was lost in the pale mists of the 
horizon out at sea. 

“ Where the devil can that boat be sailing ? ” asked 
the smuggler. 

That same evening, a little after sunset, some one 
had been heard knocking at the door of the old house 
of the Bh de la Rue. It was a boy wearing brown 
clothes and yellow stockings, a fact that indicated 
that he was a little parish clerk. An old fisherwoman 
prowling about the shore with a lantern in her hand 
had called to the boy, and this dialogue ensued between 
the fisherwoman and the little clerk, before the entrance 
to the Bh de la Rue ; — 

“ What d’ye want, lad ? ” 

The man of this place.” 

“ He’s not there.” 

“ Where is he ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

” Will he be there to-morrow ? ” 

I don’t know.” 

“Is he gone away ? ” 

“ I don’t know.” 

“ I’ve come, good woman, from the new rector of the 
parish, the Reverend Ebenezer Caudray, who desires 
to pay him a visit.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


229 


“ I don’t know where he is.” 

“ The rector sent me to ask if the man who lives at 
the de la Rue would be at home to-morrow morning.” 
“ I don’t know.” 


III. 

A QUOTATION FROM THE BIBLE. 

During the twenty-four hours which followed Mess 
Lethierry slept not, eat nothing, drank nothing. He 
kissed D^ruchette on the forehead, asked after Clubin, of 
whom there was as yet no news, signed a declaration 
certifying that he had no intention of preferring a charge 
against any one, and set Tangrouille at liberty. 

All the morning of the next day he remained half 
supporting himself on the table of the office of the 
Durande, neither standing nor sitting — answering kindly 
when any one spoke to him. Curiosity being satisfied, 
the Bravees had become a soUtude. There is a good 
deal of curiosity generally mingled with the haste of 
condolences. The door had closed again, and left the 
old man again alone with D^ruchette. The strange 
light that had shone in Lethierry’s eyes was extinguished. 

I The mournful look which filled them after the first news 
of the disaster had returned. 

Deruchette, anxious for his sake, had, on the advice of 
! Grace and Douce, laid silently beside him a pair of 
, stockings, which he had been knitting, sailor fashion, 
when the bad news had arrived. 

He smiled bitterly, and said, — 

” They must think me foolish.” 

After a quarter of an hour’s silence he added, — 

“ These things are well when you are happy.” 
Deruchette carried away the stockings, and took 
advantage of the opportunity to remove also the compass 


230 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


and the ship’s papers which Lethierry had been brooding 
over too long. 

In the afternoon, a little before tea-time, the door 
opened, and two strangers entered, attired in black. 
One was old, the other young. 

The young one has, perhaps, already been observed in 
the course of this story. 

The two men had each a grave air ; but their gravity 
appeared different. The old man possessed what might 
be called state gravity ; the gravity of the young man 
was in his nature. Habit engenders the one ; thought 
the other. 

They were, as their costume indicated, two clergymen, 
each belonging to the Established Church. 

The first fact in the appearance of the younger man 
which might have first struck the observer was, that his 
gravity, though conspicuous in the expression of his 
features, and evidently springing from the mind, was 
not indicated by his person. Gravity is not inconsistent 
with passion, which it exalts by purifying it ; but the 
idea of gravity could with difficulty be associated with an 
exterior remarkable above all for personal beauty. Being 
in holy orders, he must have been at least four-and- 
twenty, but he seemed scarcely more than eighteen. He 
possessed those gifts at once in harmony with, and in 
opposition to, each other : a soul which seemed created 
for exalted passion, and a body created for love. He 
was fair, rosy-fresh, slim, and elegant in his severe attire, 
and he had the cheeks of a young girl, and delicate hands. 
His movements were natural and lively, though subdued. 
Everything about him was pleasing, elegant, almost 
voluptuous. The beauty of his expression served to 
correct this excess of personal attraction. His open 
smile, which showed his teeth, regular and white as those 
of a child, had something in it pensive, even devotional. 
He had the gracefulness of a page, mingled with the 
dignity of a bishop. 

His fair hair, so fair and golden as to be almost efiemi- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 2^1 

nate, clustered over his white forehead, which was high 
and well-formed. A slight double line between the eye- 
brows awakened associations with studious thought. 

Those who saw him felt themselves in the presence of 
of one of those natures, benevolent, innocent, and pure, 
whose progress is in inverse sense with that of vulgar 
minds ; natures whom illusion renders wise, and whom 
experience makes enthusiasts. 

His older companion was no other than Doctor 
Jaquemin Herode. Doctor Jaquemin Herode belonged 
to the High Church — a party whose system is a sort of 
popery without a pope. The Church of England was 
at that epoch labouring with the tendencies which have 
since become strengthened and condensed in the form 
of Puseyism. Doctor Jaquemin Herode belonged to 
that shade of Anglicanism which is almost a variety of 
the Church of Rome. He was haughty, precise, stiff, 
and commanding. His inner sight scarcely penetrated 
outwardly. He possessed the letter in the place of 
the spirit. His manner was arrogant ; his presence 
imposing. He had less the appearance of a “ Reverend ” 
than of a Monsignore. His frock coat was cut somewhat 
in the fashion of a cassock. His true centre would have 
been Rome. He was a born Prelate of the Antechamber. 
He seemed to have been created expressly to fill a part 
in the Papal Court, to walk behind the Pontifical litter, 
with all the Court of Rome in abitto paonazzo. The 
accident of his English birth and his theological education, 
directed more towards the Old than the New Testament, 
had deprived him of that destiny. All his splendours 
were comprised in his preferments as Rector of St. Peter’s 
Port, Dean of the Island of Guernsey, and Surrogate of 
the Bishop of Winchester. These were, undoubtedly, 
not without their glories. These glories did not prevent 
M. J aquemin Herode being, on the whole, a worthy man. 

As a theologian he was esteemed by those who were 
able to judge of such matters ; he was almost an authority 
in the Court of Arches — that Sorbonne of England. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


^32 


He had the true air of erudition ; a learned contraction 
of the eyes ; bristling nostrils ; teeth which showed 
themselves at all times ; a thin upper lip and a thick 
lower one. He was the possessor of several learned 
degrees, a valuable prebend, titled friends, the confidence 
of the bishop, and a Bible which he carried always in 
his pocket. 

Mess Lethierry was so completely absorbed that the 
entrance of the two priests produced no effect upon him, 
save a slight movement of the eyebrows. 

M. Jaquemin Herode advanced, bowed, alluded in a 
few sober and dignified words to his recent promotion, 
and mentioned that he came according to custom to 
introduce among the inhabitants, and to Mess Lethierry 
in particular, his successor in the parish, the new Rector 
of St. Sampson, the Rev. Ebenezer Caudray, henceforth 
the pastor of Mess Lethierry. 

D4ruchette rose. 

The young clerg 5 mian, who was the Rev. Ebenezer, 
saluted her. 

Mess Lethierry regarded Monsieur Ebenezer Caudray, 
and muttered, “ A bad sailor.” 

Grace placed chairs. The two visitors seated them- 
selves near the table. 

Doctor H4rode commenced a discourse. It had 
reached his ears that a serious misfortune had befallen 
his host. The Durande had been lost. He came as 
Lethierry’s pastor to offer condolence and advice. This 
shipwreck was unfortunate, and yet not without com- 
pensations. Let us examine our own hearts. Are we 
not puffed up with prosperity ? The waters of felicity 
are dangerous. Troubles must be submitted to cheer- 
fully. The ways of Providence are m57sterious. Mess 
Lethierry was ruined, perhaps. But riches were a danger. 
You may have false friends ; poverty will disperse them, 
and leave you alone. The Durande was reported to have 
brought a revenue of one thousand poun^ sterling per 
annum, It was more than enough for the wise. Let up 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


233 


fly from temptations ; put not our faith in gold ; bow 
the head to losses and neglect. Isolation is full of good 
fruits. It was in solitude that Ajah discovered the warm 
springs while leading the asses of his father Zibeon. Let 
us not rebel against the inscrutable decrees of Providence. 
The holy man Job, after his misery, had put faith in 
riches. Who can say that the loss of the Durande may 
not have its advantages even of a temporal kind ? He, 
for instance. Doctor J aquemin H^rode, had invested some 
money in an excellent enterprise, now in progress at 
Sheffield. If Mess Lethierry, with the wealth which 
might still remain to him, should choose to embark in 
the same affair, he might transfer his capital to that 
town. It was an extensive manufactory of arms for the 
supply of the Czar, now engaged in repressing insurrec- 
tion in Poland. There was a good prospect of obtaining 
three hundred per cent, profit. 

The word Czar appeared to awaken Lethierry. He 
interrupted Dr. Herode. 

“ I want nothing to do with the Czar.*^ 

I The Reverend J aquemin Herode replied, — 

“ Mess Lethierry, princes are recognized by God. It 
I is written, ‘ Render unto Caesar the things which are 
Caesar’s.* The Czar is Caesar.” 

Lethierry partly relapsed into his dream and muttered : 

“ Caesar ? who is Caesar ? I don’t know.” 

The Rev. Jaquemin Herode continued his exhortations. 
He did not press the question of Sheffield. 

To contemn a Caesar was republicanism. He could 
understand a man being a republican. In that case 
he could turn his thoughts towards a republic. Mess 
Lethierry might repair his fortune in the United States, 
even better than in England. If he desired to invest what 
remained to him at great profit, he had only to take 
shares in the ^eat company for developing the resources 
of Texas, which employed more than twenty thousand 
negroes. 

“ I want nothing to do with slavery,” said Lethierry. 


234 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


“ Slavery/' replied the Reverend H^rode, “is an 
institution recognized by Scripture. It is written, ‘ If a 
man smite his slave, he shall not be punished, for he is 
his money/ " 

Grace and Douce at the door of the room listened in a 
sort of ecstasy to the words of the Reverend Doctor. 

The Doctor continued. He was, all things considered, 
as we have said, a worthy man ; and whatever his differ- 
ences, personal or connected with caste, with Mess 
Lethierry, he had come very sincerely to offer him that 
spiritual and even temporal aid which he, Doctor 
Jaquemin Herode, dispensed. 

If Mess Lethierry’s fortune had been diminished to that 
point that he was unable to take a beneficial part in any 
speculation, Russian or American, why should he not 
obtain some government appointment suited to him ? 
There were many very respectable places open to him, 
and the reverend gentleman was ready to recommend him. 
The office of Deputy-Vicomte was just vacant. Mess 
Lethierry was popular and respected, and the Reverend 
J aquemin Herode, Dean of Guernsey and Surrogate of the 
Bishop, would make an effort to obtain for Mess Lethierry 
this post. The Deputy-Vicomte is an important officer. 
He is present as the representative of His Majesty at the 
holding of the Sessions, at the debates of the Cohue, and 
at executions of justice. 

Lethierry fixed his eye upon Doctor Herode. 

“ I don’t hke hanging,” he said. 

Doctor Herode, who up to this point had pronounced 
his words with the same intonation, had now a fit of 
severity ; his tone became slightly changed. 

“ Mess Lethierry, the pain of death is of divine ordina- 
tion. God has placed the sword in the hands of governors. 
It is written, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ ” 

The Reverend Ebenezer imperceptibly drew his chair 
nearer to the Reverend Doctor, and said, so as to be heard 
only by him, — 

“ What this man says is dictated to him/’ 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


235 

** By whom ? By what ? ” demanded the Reverend 
Jaquemin H6rode, in the same tone. 

The young man replied in a whisper, By his 
conscience.” 

The Reverend Jaquemin Herode felt in his pocket, 
drew out a thick little bound volume with clasps, and said 
aloud, — 

“ Conscience is here.” 

The book was a Bible. 

Then Doctor H6rode’s tone became softer. His wish 
was to render a service to Mess Lethierry, whom he 
respected much. As his pastor, it was his right and duty 
to offer counsel. Mess Lethierry, however, was free.” 

Mess Lethierry, plunged once more in his overwhelming 
absorption, no longer listened. D^ruchette, seated near 
him, and thoughtful, also did not raise her eyes, and by 
her silent presence somewhat increased the embarrass- 
ment of a conversation not very animated. A witness 
who says nothing is a species of indefinable weight. 
Doctor Herode, however, did not appear to feel it. 

Lethierry no longer replying, Doctor Herode expatiated 
freely. Counsel is from man ; inspiration is from God. 
In the counsels of the priests there is inspiration. It is 
good to accept, dangerous to refuse them. Sochoh was 
seized by eleven devils for disdaining the exhortations of 
Nathaniel. Tiburianus was struck with a leprosy for 
having driven from his house the Apostle Andrew. Bar- 
jesus, a magician though he was, was punished with 
blindness for having mocked at the words of St. Paul. 
Elxai and his sisters, Martha and Martena, are in eternal 
torments for despising the warnings of Valent ianus, who 
proved to them clearly that their Jesus Christ, thirty- 
eight leagues in height, was a demon. Aholibamah, who 
is also called Judith, obeyed the Councils; Reuben and 
Peniel listened to the counsels from on high, as their 
names indeed indicate. Reuben signifies son of the 
vision ; and Peniel, the face of God. 

Mess Lethierry struck the table with his fist. 


236 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


“ Parbleu ! ” he cried ; “it was my fault.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked M. Jaquemin Herode. 

“ I say that it is my fault.” 

“Your fault? Why?” 

“ Because I allowed the Durande to return on Fridays.” 

M. Jaquemin Herode whispered in Caudray’s ear, — 

“ This man is superstitious.” 

He resumed, raising his voice, and in a didactic tone, — 

“ Mess Lethierry, it is puerile to believe in Fridays. 
You ought not to put faith in fables. Friday is a day 
just like any other. It is very often a propitious day. 
Melendez founded the city of Saint Augustin on a Friday ; 
it was on a Friday that Henry the Seventh gave his 
commission to John Cabot ; the Pilgrims of the May- 
■flower landed at Province Town on a Friday. Washing- 
ton was bom on Friday, the 22nd of Febmary 1732 ; 
Christopher Columbus discovered America on Friday, the 
12th of October 1492.” 

Having dehvered himself of these remarks, he rose. 

Caudray, whom he had brought with him, rose also. 

Grace and Douce, perceiving that the two clergymen 
were about to take their leave, opened the folding-doors. 

Mess Lethierry saw nothing, heard nothing. 

M. Jaquemin Herode said, apart to M. Caudray, — 

“ He does not even salute us. This is not sorrow ; 
it is vacancy. He must have lost his reason.” 

He took his little Bible, however, from the table, and 
held it between his hands outstretched, as one holds a 
bird in fear that it may fly away. This attitude awakened 
among the persons present a certain amount of attention. 
Grace and Douce leaned forward eagerly. 

His voice assumed all the solemnity of which it was 
capable. 

“ Mess Lethierry,” he began, “ let us not part without 
reading a page of the Holy Book. It is from books that 
wise men derive consolation in the troubles of life. The 
profane have their oracles ; but believers have their 
ready resource in the Bible. The first book which comes 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


237 


to hand, opened by chance, may afford counsel ; but the 
Bible, opened at any page, yields a revelation. It is, 
above all, a boon to the afflicted. Yes, Holy Scripture 
is an unfailing balm for their wounds. In the presence 
of affliction it is good to consult its sacred pages — ^to open 
even without choosing the place, and to read with faith 
the passage which we find. What man does not choose 
is chosen by God. He knoweth best what suiteth us. 
His finger pointeth invisibly to that which we read. 
Whatever be the page, it will infallibly enlighten. Let 
us seek, then, no other light ; but hold fast to His. It is 
the word from on high. In the text which is evoked with 
confidence and reverence, often do we find a mysterious 
significance in our present troubles. Let us hearken, 
then, and obey. Mess Lethierry, you are in affliction ; 
but I hold here the book of consolation. You are sick 
at heart ; but I have here the book of spiritual health.” 

The Reverend J aquemin Herode touched the spring of 
the clasp, and let his finger slip between the leaves. 
Then he placed his hand a moment upon the open volume, 
collected his thoughts, and, raising his eyes impressively, 
began to read in a loud voice. 

The passage which he had lighted on was as follows : — 

“ And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at the 
eventide : and he lifted up his eyes, and saw, and, behold, 
the camels were coming. 

“ And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw 
Isaac she lighted off the camel. 

“ For she had said unto the servant. What man is this 
that walketh in the field to meet us ? 

“ And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, 
and took Rebekah, and she became his wife ; and he loved 
her : and Isaac was comforted after his mother’s death.” 

Caudray and Deruchette glanced at each other. 





SECOND PART. 




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BOOK I.— MALICIOUS GILLIATT. 


I. 

THE PLACE WHICH IS EASY TO REACH, BUT DIFFICULT TO 
LEAVE AGAIN. 

The bark which had been observed at so many points on 
the coast of Guernsey on the previous evening was, as the 
reader has guessed, the old Dutch barge or sloop. Gilliatt 
had chosen the channel along the coast among the rocks. 
It was the most dangerous way, but it was the most direct. 
To take the shortest route was his only thought. Ship- 
wrecks will not wait ; the sea is a pressing creditor ; an 
hour’s delay may be irreparable. His anxiety was to go 
quickly to the rescue of the machinery in danger. 

One of his objects in leaving Guernsey was to avoid 
arousing attention. He set out like one escaping from 
justice, and seemed anxious to hide from human eyes. 
He shunned the eastern coast, as if he did not care to pass 
in sight of St. Sampson and St. Peter’s Port, and glided 
silently along the opposite coast, which is comparatively 
uninhabited. Among the breakers it was necessary to 
ply the oars ; but Gilliatt managed them on scientific 
principles ; taking the water quietly, and dropping it 
with exact regularity, he was able to move in the darkness 
with as little noise and as rapidly as possible. So stealthy 
were his movements that he might have seemed tn be 
bent upon some evil errand. 


242 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. , 

In truth, though embarking desperately in an enter- 
prise which might well be called impossible, and risking 
his life with nearly every chance against him, he feared 
nothing but the possibility of some rival in the work 
which he had set before him. 

As the day began to break, those unknown eyes which 
look down upon the world from boundless space might 
have beheld, at one of the most dangerous and solitary 
spots at sea, two objects, the distance between which 
was gradually decreasing, as the one was approaching 
the other. One, which was almost imperceptible in the 
wide movement of the waters, was a sailing boat. In this 
was a man. It was the sloop. The other, black, motion- 
less, colossal, rose above the waves, a singular form. 
Two tall pillars issuing from the sea bore aloft a sort of 
cross-beam which was like a bridge between them. This 
bridge, so singular in shape that it was impossible to 
imagine what it was from a distance, touched each of the 
two pillars. It resembled a vast portal. Of what use 
could such an erection be in that open plain, the sea, which 
stretched around it far and wide ? It might have been 
imagined to be a Titanic cromlech, planted there in 
mid-ocean by an imperious whim, and built up by hands 
accustomed to proportion their labours to the great deep. 
Its wild outline stood well defined against the clear sky. 

The morning light was growing stronger in the east : 
the whiteness in the horizon deepened the shadow on the 
sea. In the opposite sky the moon was sinking. 

The two perpendicular forms were the Douvres. The 
huge mass held fast between them, like an architrave 
between two pillars, was the wreck of the Durande. 

The rock, thus holding fast and exhibiting its prey, was 
terrible to behold. Inanimate things look sometimes as 
if endowed with a dark and hostile spirit towards man. 
There was a menace in the attitude of the rocks. They 
seemed to be biding their time. 

Nothing could be more suggestive of haughtiness and 
arrogance than their whole appearance : the conquered 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


243 


vessel ; the triumphant abyss. The two rocks, still 
streaming with the tempest of the day before, were like 
two wrestlers sweating from a recent struggle. The wind 
had sunk ; the sea rippled gently ; here and there the 
presence of breakers might be detected in the graceful 
streaks of foam upon the surface of the waters. A sound 
came from the sea like the murmuring of bees. All 
around was level except the Douvres, rising straight, like 
two black columns. Up to a certain height they were 
completely bearded with seaweed ; above this their 
steep haunches glittered at points like polished armour. 
They seemed ready to commence the strife again. The 
beholder felt that they were rooted deep in mountains 
whose summits were beneath the sea. Their aspect was 
full of a sort of tragic power. 

Ordinarily the sea conceals her crimes. She delights in 
privacy. Her unfathomable deeps keep silence. She 
wraps herself in a mystery which rarely consents to give 
up its secrets. We know her savage nature, but who can 
tell the extent of her dark deeds ? She is at once open 
and secret ; she hides away carefully, and cares not to 
divulge her actions ; wrecks a vessel, and, covering it 
with the waves, engulfs it deep as if conscious of her guilt. 
Among her crimes is hypocrisy. She slays and steals, 
conceals her booty, puts on an air of unconsciousness, and 
smiles. 

Here, however, was nothing of the kind. The Douvres, 
lifting above the level of the waters the shattered hull of 
the Durande, had an air of triumph. The imagination 
might have pictured them as two monstrous arms, 
reaching upwards from the gulf, and exhibiting to the 
tempest the hfeless body of the ship. Their aspect was 
like that of an assassin boasting of his evil deeds. 

The solemnity of the hour contributed something to 
the impression of the scene. There is a mysterious 
grandeur in the dawn, as of the border-land between the 
region of consciousness and the world of our dreams. 
There is something spectral in that confused transition 


244 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


time. The immense form of the two DouvTes, like a 
capital letter H, the Durande forming its cross-stroke, 
appeared against the horizon in all their twilight majesty. 

Gilliatt was attired in his seaman's clothing : a Guern- 
sey shirt, woollen stockings, thick shoes, a homespun 
jacket, trousers of thick stuff, with pockets, and a cap 
upon his head of red worsted, of a kind then much in use 
among sailors, and known in the last century as a 
gaWienne, 

He recognized the rocks, and steered towards them. 

The situation of the Durande was exactly the contrary 
of that of a vessel gone to the bottom : it was a vessel 
suspended in the air. 

No problem more strange was ever presented to a 
salvor. 

It was broad daylight when Gilliatt arrived in the 
waters about the rock. 

As we have said, there was but httle sea. The slight 
agitation of the water was due almost entirely to its 
confinement among the rocks. Every passage, small or 
large, is subject to this chopping movement. The inside 
of a channel is always more or less white with foam. 
Gilliatt did not approach the Douvres without caution. 

He cast the sounding-lead several times. 

He had a cargo to disembark. 

Accustomed to long absences, he had at home a number 
of necessaries always ready. He had brought a sack of 
biscuit, another of rye-meal, a basket of salt fish and 
smoked beef, a large can of fresh water ; a Norwegian 
chest painted with flowers, containing several coarse 
woollen shirts, his tarpaulin and his waterproof overalls, 
and a sheepskin which he was accustomed to throw at 
night over his clothes. On leaving the Bfi de la Rue he 
had put all these things hastily into the barge, with the 
addition of a large loaf. In his hurry he had brought no 
other tools but his huge forge-hammer, his chopper and 
hatchet, and a knotted rope. Furnished with a grappling- 
iron and with a ladder of that sort, the steepest rocks 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


245 


become accessible, and a good sailor will find it possible 
to scale the rudest escarpment. In the island of Sark 
the visitor may see what the fisherman of the Havre 
Gosselin can accomplish with a knotted cord. 

His nets and lines and all his fishing apparatus were in 
the barge. He had placed them there mechanically and 
by habit ; for he intended, if his enterprise continued, to 
sojourn for some time in an archipelago of rocks and 
breakers, where fishing nets and tackle are of little use. 

At the moment when Gilliatt was skirting the great 
rock the sea was retiring ; a circumstance favourable 
to his purpose. The departing tide laid bare, at the foot 
of the smaller Douvre, one or two table-rocks, horizontal, 
or only slightly inclined, and bearing a fanciful resem- 
blance to boar^ supported by crows. These table-rocks, 
sometimes narrow, sometimes broad, standing at unequal 
distances along the side of the great perpendicular column, 
were continued in the form of a thin comice up to a spot 
just beneath the Durande, the hull of which stood 
swelling out between the two rocks. The wreck was held 
fast there as in a vice. 

This series of platforms was convenient for approaching 
and surveying the position. It was convenient also for 
disembarking the contents of the barge provisionally ; 
but it was necessary to hasten, for it was only above 
water for a few hours. With the rising tide the table- 
rocks would be again beneath the foam. 

It was before these table-rocks, some level, some 
slanting, that Gilliatt pushed in and brought the barge to 
a stand. A thick mass of wet and slippery sea-wrack 
covered them, rendered more slippery here and there by 
their inclined surfaces. 

Gilliatt pulled off his shoes and sprang naked-footed 
on to the slimy weeds, and made fast the barge to a point 
of rock. 

Then he advanced as far as he could along the granite 
comice, reached the rock immediately beneath the wreck, 
looked up, and examined it. 


246 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The Durande had been caught suspended, and as it 
were fitted in between the two rocks, at about twenty 
feet above the water. It must have been a heavy sea 
which had cast her there. 

Such effects from furious seas have nothing surprising 
for those who are familiar with the ocean. To cite one 
example only : — On the 25th January, 1840, in the Gulf 
of Stora, a tempest struck with its expiring force a brig, 
and casting it imost intact completely over the broken 
wreck of the corvette La Marne fixed it immovable, 
bowsprit first, in a gap between the cliffs. 

The Douvres, however, held only a part of the Durande. 

The vessel snatched from the waves had been, as it 
were, uprooted from the waters by the hurricane. A 
whirlwind had wrenched it against the counteracting 
force of the rolling waves, and the vessel thus caught in 
contrary directions by the two claws of the tempest had 
snapped like a lath. The after-part, with the engine and 
the paddles, lifted out of the foam and driven by all the 
fury of the cyclone into the defile of the Douvres, had 
plunged in up to her midship beam, and remamed there. 
The blow had been well directed. To drive it in this 
fashion between the two rocks, the storm had struck it as 
with an enormous hammer. The forecastle ('arried away 
and rolled down by the sea, had gone to fragments among 
the breakers. 

The hold, broken in, had scattered out the bodies of the 
drowned cattle upon the sea. 

A large portion of the forward side and bulwarks still 
hung to the riders by the larboard paddle-box, and by 
some shattered braces easy to strike oE with the blow 
of a hatchet. 

Here and there, among beams, planks, rags of canvas, 
pieces of chains and other remains of wreck were seen 
lying about among the rugged fragments of shattered 
rock. 

Gilliatt surveyed the Durande attentively. The keel 
formed a roofing over his head. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


247 


A serene sky stretched far and wide over the waters, 
scarcely wrinkled with a passing breath. The sun rose 
gloriously in the midst of the vast azure circle. 

From time to time a drop of water was detached from 
the wreck and fell into the sea. 


11 . 

A CATALOGUE OF DISASTERS. 

The Douvres differed in shape as well as in height. 

Upon the Little Douvre, which was curved and pointed, 
long veins of reddish-coloured rock, of a comparatively 
soft kind, could be seen branching out and dividing the 
interior of the granite. At the edges of these red dykes 
were fractures, favourable to climbing. One of these 
fractures, situated a little above the wreck, had been so 
laboriously worn and scooped out by the splashing of the 
waves, that it had become a sort of niche, in which it 
would have been quite possible to place a statue. The 
granite of the Little Douvre was rounded at the surface, 
and, to the feel at least, soft like touchstone ; but this 
feeling detracted nothing from its durability. The 
Little Douvre terminated in a point like a horn. The 
Great Douvre, polished, smooth, glossy, perpendicular, 
and looking as if cut out by the builder's square, was in 
one piece, and seemed made of black ivory. Not a hole, 
not a break in its smooth surface. The escarpment 
looked inhospitable. A convict could not have used it 
for escape, nor a bird for a place for its nest. On its 
summit there was a horizontal surface as upon “ The 
Man Rock ; ” but the summit of the Great Douvre was 
inaccessible. 

It was possible to scale the Little Douvre, but not to 
remain on the summit ; it would have been possible to 


248 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

rest on the summit of the Great Douvre, but impossible 
to scale it. 

Gilliatt, having rapidly surveyed the situation of affairs, 
returned to the barge, landed its contents upon the largest 
of the horizontal cornice rocks, made of the whole com- 
pact mass a sort of bale, which he rolled up in tarpaulin, 
fitted a sling rope to it with a hoisting block, pushed the 
package into a comer of the rocks where the waves could 
not reach it, and then clutching the Little Douvre with 
his hands, and holding on with his naked feet, he clam- 
bered from projection to projection, and from niche to 
niche, until he found himself level with the wrecked 
vessel high up in the air. 

Having reached the height of the paddles, he sprang 
upon the poop. 

The interior of the wreck presented a mournful aspect. 

Traces of a great stmggle were everywhere visible. 
There were plainly to be seen the frightful ravages of the 
sea and wind. The action of the tempest resembles the 
violence of a band of pirates. Nothing is more like the 
victim of a criminal outrage than a wrecked ship violated 
and stripped by those terrible accomplices, the storm- 
cloud, the thunder, the rain, the squall, the waves, and 
the breakers. 

Standing upon the dismantled deck, it was natural to 
dream of the presence of something like a furious stamp- 
ing of the spirits of the storm. Ever3rwhere around were 
the marks of their rage. The strange contortions of 
certain portions of the iron-work bore testimony to the 
terrific force of the winds. The between-decks were like 
the cell of a lunatic, in which everything has been broken. 

No wild beast can compare with the sea for mangling 
its prey. The waves are full of talons. The north wind 
bites, the billows devour, the waves are like hungry 
jaws. The ocean strikes like a lion with its heavy paw, 
seizing and dismembering at the same moment. 

The ruin conspicuous in the Durande presented the 
peculiarity of being detailed and minute. It was a sort 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


249 


of horrible stripping and plucking. Much of it seemed 
done with design. The beholder was tempted to exclaim, 
“ What wanton mischief T' The ripping of the planking 
was edged here and there artistically. This peculiarity is 
common with the ravages of the cyclone. To chip and 
tear away is the caprice of the great devastator. Its 
ways are like those of the professional torturer. The 
disasters which it causes wear a look of ingenious punish- 
ments. One might fancy it actuated by the worst passions 
of man. It refines in cruelty like a savage. While it is 
exterminating it dissects bone by bone. It torments its 
victim, avenges itself, and takes delight in its work. It 
even appears to descend to petty acts of malice. 

Cyclones are rare in our latitudes, and are, for that 
reason, the more dangerous, being generally unexpected. 
A rock in the path of a heavy wind may become the pivot 
of a storm. It is probable that the squall had thus 
rotated upon the point of the Douvres, and had turned 
suddenly into a waterspout on meeting the shock of the 
rocks, a fact which explained the casting of the vessel so 
high among them. \^en the cyclone blows, a vessel is 
of no more weight in the wind than a stone in a sling. 

The damage received by the Durande was like the 
wound of a man cut in twain. 1 1 was a divided trunk from 
which issued a mass of debris like the entrails of a body. 
Various kinds of cordage hung floating and trembling, 
chains swung chattering ; the fibres and nerves of the 
vessel were there naked and exposed. What was not 
smashed was disjointed. 

Fragments of the sheeting resembled currycombs 
bristling with nails ; everything bore the appearance of 
ruin ; a handspike had become nothing but a piece of 
iron ; a sounding-lead, nothing but a lump of metal ; 
a dead-eye had become a mere piece of wood ; a halliard, 
an end of rope ; a strand of cord, a tangled skein ; a bolt- 
rope, a thread in the hem of a sail. All around was the 
lamentable work of demolition. Nothing remained that 
was not unhooked, unnailed, cracked, wasted, warped. 


250 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


pierced with holes, destroyed : nothing hung together 
in the dreadful mass, but all was torn, dislocated, broken. 
There was that air of drift which characterizes the scene 
of all struggles — ^from the melees of men, which are called 
battles, to the melees of the elements, to which we give 
the name of chaos. Everything was sinking and dropping 
away ; a rolling mass of planks, panelling, ironwork, 
cables, and beams had been arrested just at the great 
fracture of the hull, whence the least additional ^ock 
must have precipitated them into the sea. What 
remained of her powerful frame, once so triumphant, 
was cracked here and there, showing through large 
apertures the dismal gloom within. 

The foam from below spat its flakes contemptuously 
upon this broken and forlorn outcast of the sea. 


III. 

SOUND, BUT NOT SAFE. 

Gilliatt did not expect to find only a portion of the 
ship existing. Nothing in the description, in other 
respects so precise, of the captain of the Shealtiel had 
led him to anticipate this division of the vessel in the 
centre. It was probable that the “ diabolical crash '' 
heard by the captain of the Shealtiel marked the moment 
when this destruction had taken place under the blows 
of a tremendous sea. The captain had, doubtless, worn 
ship just before this last heavy squall ; and what he 
had taken for a great sea was probably a waterspout. 
Later, when he drew nearer to observe the wreck, he 
had only been able to see the stem of the vessel — the 
remainder, that is to say, the large opening where the 
forepart had given way, having been concealed from 
him among the masses of rock. 

With that exception, the information given by the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 251 

captain of the Sheaitiel was strictly correct. The hull 
was useless, but the engine remained intact. 

Such chances are common in the history of ship- 
wreck. The logic of disaster at sea is beyond the grasp 
of human science. 

The masts having snapped short, had fallen over the 
side ; the chimney was not even bent. The great iron 
plating which supported the machinery had kept it 
together, and in one piece. The planks of the paddle- 
boxes were disjointed, like the leaves of wooden sun- 
blinds ; but through their apertures the paddles them- 
selves could be seen in good condition. A few of their 
floats only were missing. 

Besides the machinery, the great stem capstan had 
resisted the destruction. Its chain was there, and, 
thanks to its firm fixture in a frame of joists, might 
still be of service, unless the strain of the voyal should 
break away the planking. The flooring of the deck 
bent at almost every point, and was tottering throughout. 

On the other hand, the tmnk of the hull, fixed between 
the Douvres, held together, as we have already said, and 
it ap])eared strong. 

There was something like derision in this preservation 
ol the machinery ; something which added to the irony 
of the misioi tune. The sombre malice of the unseen 
powers of mischief displays itself sometimes in such 
bitter mockeries. The machinery was saved, but its 
preservation did not make it any the less lost. The 
ocean seemed to have kept it only to demolish it at 
leisure. It was like the playing of the cat with her prey. 

Its fate was to suffer there and to be dismembered 
day by day. It was to be the plaything of the savage 
amusements of the sea. It was slowly to dwindle, and, 
as it were, to melt away. For what could be done ? 
That this vast block of mechanism and gear, at once 
massive and delicate, condemned to fixity by its weight, 
delivered up in that solitude to the destructive elements, 
exposed m the gripe of the rock to the action of the 


252 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


wind and wave, could, under the trown of that implacable 
spot, escape from slow destruction, seemed a madness 
even to imagine. 

The Durande was the captive of the Douvres. 

How could she be extricated from that position ? 

How could she be delivered from her bondage ? 

The escape of a man is difficult ; but what a problem 
was this — ^the escape of a vast and cumbrous machine. 


IV. 

A PRELIMINARY SURVEY. 

Gilliatt was pressed on all sides by demands upon his 
labours. The most pressing, however, was to find a safe 
mooring for the barge ; then a shelter for himself. 

The Durande having settled down more on the lar- 
board than on the starboard side, the right paddle-box 
was higher than the left. 

Gilliatt ascended the paddle-box on the right. From 
that position, although the gut of rocks stretching in 
abrupt angles behind the Douvres had several elbows, 
he was able to study the ground-plan of the group. 

This survey was the preliminary step of his operations. 

The Douvres, as we have already described them, were 
like two high-gable ends, forming the narrow entrance 
to a straggling alley of small cliffs with perpendicular 
faces. It is not rare to find in primitive submarine 
formations these singular kinds of passages, which seem 
cut out with a hatchet. 

This defile was extremely tortuous, and was never 
without water even in the low tides. A current, much 
agitated, traversed it at all times from end to end. The 
sharpness of its turnings was favourable or unfavourable, 
according to the nature of the prevailing wind ; some- 
times it broke the swell and caused it to fall ; sometimes 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


253 


it exasperated it. This latter effect was the most frequent. 
An obstacle arouses the anger of the sea, and pushes it 
to excesses. The foam is the exaggeration of the waves. 

The two chains of rocks, leaving between them this 
kind of street in the sea, formed stages at a lower level 
than the Douvres, gradually decreasing, until they sunk 
together at a certain distance beneath the waves. 

The stormy winds in these narrow and tortuous 
passages between the rocks are subjected to a similar 
compression, and acquire the same malignant character. 
The tempest frets in its sudden imprisonment. Its bulk 
is still immense, but sharpened and contracted ; and 
it strikes with the massiveness of a huge club and the 
keenness of an arrow. It pierces evfen while it strikes 
down. It is a hurricane contracted, like the draught 
through the crevice of a door. 

There was another such gullet of less height than the 
gullet of the Douvres, but narrower still, and which 
formed the eastern entrance of the defile. It was evident 
that the double prolongation of the ridge of rocks con- 
tinued the kind of street under the water as far as “ The 
Man ” rock, which stood like a square citadel at the 
extremity of the group. 

At low water, indeed, which was the time at which 
Gilliatt was observing them, the two rows of sunken rock 
showed their tips, some high and dry, and all visible and 
preserving their parallel without interruption. 

“ The Man ” formed the boundary, and buttressed 
on the eastern side the entire mass of the group, which 
was protected on the opposite side by the two Douvres. 

The whole, from a bird’s-eye view, appeared like a 
winding chaplet of rocks, having the Douvres at one 
extremity and “ The Man at the other. 

The Douvres, taken together, were merely two gigantic 
shafts of granite protruding vertically and almost touch- 
ing each other, and forming the crest of one of the moun- 
tainous ranges lying beneath the ocean. Those immense 
ridges are not only found rising out of the unfathomable 


254 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


deep. The surf and the squall had broken them up and 
divided them like the teeth of a saw. Only the tip of 
the ridge was visible ; this was the group of rocks. The 
remainder, which the waves concealed, must have been 
enormous. The passage in which the storm had planted 
the Durande was the way between these two colossal 
shafts. 

This passage, zigzag in form as the forked lightning, 
was of about the same width in all parts. The ocean 
had so fashioned it. Its eternal commotion produces 
sometimes those singular regularities. There is a sort 
of geometry in the action of the sea. 

From one extremity to the other of the defile, the 
two parallel granite walls confronted each other at a 
distance which the midship frame of the Durande 
measured exactly. Between the two Douvres, the 
widening of the Little Douvre, curved and turned back 
as it was, had formed a space for the paddles. In any 
other part they must have been shattered to fragments. 

The high double facade of rock within the passage was 
hideous to the sight. When, in the exploration of the 
desert of water which we call the ocean, we come upon 
the unknown world of the sea, all is uncouth and shape- 
less. So much as Gilliatt could see of the defile from 
the height of the wreck was appalling. In the rocky 
gorges of the ocean we may often trace a strange per- 
manent impersonation of shipwreck. The defile of 
the Douvres was one of these gorges, and its effect was 
exciting to the imagination. The oxides of the rock 
showed on the escarpment here and there in red places, 
like marks of clotted blood ; it resembled the splashes 
on the walls of an abattoir. Associations of the charnel- 
house haunted the place. The rough marine stones, 
diversely tinted — ^here by the decomposition of metalhc 
amalgams mingling with the rock, there by the mould 
of dampness, manifested in places by purple scales, 
hideous green blotches, and ruddy splashes, awakened 
ideas of murder and extermination. It was like the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


255 


unwashed walls of a chamber which had been the scene 
of an assassination ; or it might have been imagined 
that men had been crushed to death there, leaving 
traces of their fate. The peaked rocks produced an 
indescribable impression of accumulated agonies. 
Certain spots appeared to be still dripping with the 
carnage ; here the wall was wet, and it looked impossible 
to touch it without leaving the fingers bloody. The 
blight of massacre seemed ever5^vhere. At the base 
of the double parallel escarpment, scattered along the 
water’s edge, or just below the waves, or in the worn 
hollows of the rocks, were monstrous rounded masses 
of shingle, some scarlet, others black or purple, which 
bore a strange resemblance to internal organs of 
the body ; they might have been taken for human 
lungs, or heart, or liver, scattered and putrefying in 
that dismal place. Giants might have been disem- 
bowelled there. From top to bottom of the granite 
ran long red lines, which might have been compared 
to oozings from a funeral bier. 

Such aspects are frequent in sea caverns. 


V. 

A WORD UPON THE SECRET CO-OPERATIONS OF THE 
ELEMENTS. 

Those who, by the disastrous chances of sea-voyages, 
happen to be condemned to a temporary habitation upon 
a rock in mid-ocean find that the form of their inhospitable 
refuge is by no means a matter of indifference. There is 
the pyramidal-shaped rock, a single peak rising from the 
water ; there is the circle rock somewhat resembling a 
round of great stones ; and there is the corridor rock. 
The latter is the most alarming of all. It is not only the 
ceaseless agony of the waves between its walls, or the 


256 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


tumult of the imprisoned sea ; there are also certain 
obscure meteorological characteristics which appear to 
appertain to this parallelism of two marine rocks. The 
two straight sides seem a veritable electric battery. 

The first result of the peculiar position of these corridor 
rocks is an action upon the air and the water. The 
corridor rock acts upon the waves and the wind mechanic- 
ally by its form ; galvanically, by the different magnetic 
action rendered possible by its vertical height, its masses 
in juxtaposition and contrary to each other. 

This form of rock attracts to itself all the forces 
scattered in the winds, and exercises over the tempest 
a singular power of concentration. 

Hence there is in the neighbourhood of these breakers 
a certain accentuation of storms. 

It must be borne in mind that the wind is composite. 
The wind is believed to be simple ; but it is by no means 
simple. Its power is not merely dynamic, it is chemical 
also ; but this is not all, it is magnetic. Its effects are 
often inexplicable. The wind is as much electrical as 
aerial. Certain winds coincide with the aurorce horeales. 
The wind blowing from the bank of the Aiguilles rolls the 
waves one hundred feet high ; a fact observed with 
astonishment by Dumont-d’Urville. The corvette, he 
says, “ knew not what to obey.” 

In the south seas the waters will sometimes become 
inflated like an outbreak of immense tumours ; and at 
such times the ocean becomes so terrible that the savages 
fly to escape the sight of it. The blasts in the north seas 
are different. They are mingled with sharp points of 
ice ; and their gusts, unfit to breathe, will blow the 
sledges of the Esquimaux backwards on the snow. Other 
winds bum. The simoon of Africa is the typhoon of 
China and the samiel of India. Simoon, typhoon, and 
samiel are believed to be the names of demons. They 
descend from the heights of the mountains. A storm 
vitrified the volcano of Toluca. This hot wind, a whirl- 
wind of inky colour, rushing upon red clouds, is alluded 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


257 


to in the Vedas : Behold the black god, who comes to 
steal the red cows.” In all these facts we trace the 
presence of the electric mystery. 

The wind indeed is full of it ; so are the waves. The sea, 
too, is composite in its nature. Under its waves of water 
which we see it has its waves of force which are invisible. 
Its constituents are innumerable. Of all the elements the 
ocean is the most indivisible and the most profound. 

Endeavour to conceive this chaos so enormous that it 
dwarfs all other things to one level. It is the universal 
recipient, reservoir of germs of life, and mould of trans- 
formations. It amasses and then disperses, it accumu- 
lates and then sows, it devours and then creates. It 
receives all the waste and refuse waters of the earth, and 
converts them into treasure. It is solid in the iceberg, 
liquid in the wave, fluid in the estuary. Regarded as 
matter, it is a mass ; regarded as a force, it is an abstrac- 
tion. It equalizes and unites all phenomena. It may 
be called the infinite in combination. By force and 
disturbance it arrives at transparency. It dissolves all 
differences, and absorbs them into its own unity. Its 
elements are so numerous that it becomes identity. One 
of its drops is complete, and represents the whole. From 
the abundance of its tempests it attains equilibrium. 
Plato beheld the mazy dances of the spheres. Strange 
fact, though not the less real, the ocean, in the vast 
terrestrial journey round the sun, becomes, with its flux 
and reflux, the balance of the globe. 

In a phenomenon of the sea, aU other phenomena are 
resumed. The sea is blown out of a waterspout as from 
a siphon ; the storm observes the principle of the pump ; 
the lightning issues from the sea as from the air. Aboard 
ships dull shocks are sometimes felt, and an odour of 
sulphur issues from the receptacles of chain cables. The 
ocean boils. ‘‘ The devil has put the sea in his cauldron,” 
said De Ruyter. In certain tempests, which characterize 
the equinoxes and the return to equilibrium of the prolific 
power of nature, vessels breasting the foam seem to give 

9 


258 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


out a kind of fire, phosphoric lights chase each other 
along the rigging, so close sometimes to the sailors at 
their work that the latter stretch forth their hands and 
try to catch, as they fly, these birds of flame. After the 
great earthquake of Lisbon, a blast of hot air, as from a 
furnace, drove before it towards the city a wave sixty 
feet high. The oscillation of the ocean is closely related 
to the convulsions of the earth. 

These immeasurable forces produce sometimes extraor- 
dinary inundations. At the end of the year 1864, one of 
the Maidive Islands, at a hundred leagues from the 
Malabar coast, actually foundered in the sea. It sunk to 
the bottom like a shipwrecked vessel. The fishermen 
who sailed from it in the morning, found nothing when 
they returned at night : scarcely could they distinguish 
their villages under the sea. On this occasion boats were 
the spectators of the wrecks of houses. 

In Europe, where nature seems restrained by the pres- 
ence of civilization, such events are rare, and are thought 
impossible. N evertheless, J ersey and Guernsey originally 
formed part of Gaul, and at the moment while we are 
writing these lines, an equinoctial gale has demolished a 
great portion of the cliff of the Firth of Forth in Scotland. 

Nowhere do these terrific forces appear more formidably 
conjoined than in the surprising strait known as the Lyse- 
Fiord. The Lyse-Fiord is the most terrible of all the Gut 
Rocks of the ocean. Their terrors are there complete. 
It is in the northern sea, near the inhospitable Gulf of 
Stavanger, and in the 59th degree of latitude. The water 
is black and heavy, and subject to intermitting storms. 
In this sea, and in the midst of this solitude, rises a great 
sombre street — a. street for no human footsteps. None 
ever pass through there ; no ship ever ventures in. It is 
a corridor ten leagues in length, between two rocky walls 
of three thousand feet in height. Such is the passage 
which presents an entrance to the sea. The defile has 
its elbows and angles, like aU these streets of the sea — 
never straight, having been formed by the irregular action 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


259 


of the water. In the Lyse-Fiord the sea is almost 
always tranquil ; the sky above is serene ; the place 
terrible. Where is the wind ? Not on high. Where 
is the thunder ? Not on the heavens. The wind is under 
the sea ; the lightnings within the rock. Now and then 
there is a convulsion of the water. At certain moments, 
when there is perhaps not a cloud in the sky, nearly half- 
way up the perpendicular rock, at a thousand or fifteen 
hundred feet above the water, and rather on the southern 
than on the northern side, the rock suddenly thunders, 
lightnings dart forth, and then retire Hke those toys which 
lengthen out and spring back again in the hands of 
children. They contract and enlarge ; strike the op- 
posite cliff, re-enter the rock, issue forth again, recom- 
mence their play, multiply their heads and tips of flame, 
grow bristling with points, strike wherever they can, 
recommence again, and then are extinguished with a 
sinister abruptness. Flocks of birds fly wide in terror. 
Nothing is more mysterious than that artillery issuing 
out of the invisible. One cliff attacks the other, raining 
Hghtning blows from side to side. Their war concerns 
not man. It signals the ancient enmity of two rocks in 
the impassable gulf. 

In the Lyse-Fiord the wind whirls like the water in an 
estuary, the rock performs the function of the clouds, 
and the thunder breaks forth like volcanic fire. This 
strange defile is a voltaic pile, the plates of which are the 
double line of cliffs. 


VI. 

A STABLE FOR THE HORSE. 

Gilliatt was sufficiently familiar with marine rocks to 
grapple in earnest with the Douvres. Before all, as we 
have just said, it was necessary to find a safe shelter for 
the barge. 


26 o the toilers of the sea. 

The double row of reefs, which stretched in a sinuous 
form behind the Douvres, connected itself here and there 
with other rocks, and suggested the existence of blind 
passages and hollows opening out into the straggling way, 
and joining again to the principal defile like branches to a 
trunk. 

The lower part of these rocks was covered with kelp, the 
upper part with lichens. The uniform level of the sea- 
weed marked the line of the water at the height of the 
tide, and the limit of the sea in calm weather. The points 
which the water had not touched presented those silver 
and golden hues communicated to marine granite by the 
white and yellow lichen. 

A crust of conoidical shells covered the rock at certain 
points, the dry rot of the granite. 

At other points in the retreating angles, where fine sand 
had accumulated, ribbed on its surface rather by the wind 
than by the waves, appeared tufts of blue thistles. 

In the indentations, sheltered from the winds, could be 
traced the little perforations made by the sea-urchin. 
This shelly mass of prickles, which moves about a hving 
ball by rolling on its spines, and the armour of which is 
composed of ten thousand pieces, artistically adjusted and 
welded together — ^the sea-urchin, which is popularly 
called, for some unknown reason, ‘'Aristotle’s lantern” — 
wears away the granite with his five teeth, and lodges 
himself in the hole. It is in such holes that the samphire- 
gatherers find them. They cut them in halves and eat 
them raw, like an oyster. Some steep their bread in the 
soft flesh. Hence its other name, “ sea-egg.” 

The tips of the further reefs, left out of the water by the 
receding tide, extended close under the escarpment of 
“The Man” to a sort of creek, enclosed nearly on all 
sides by rocky walls. Here was evidently a possible 
harbourage. It had the form of a horseshoe, and opened 
only on one side to the east wind, which is the least violent 
of all winds in that sea labyrinth. The water was shut 
in there, and almost motionless. The shelter seemed 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 261 

comparatively safe, Gilliatt, moreover, had not much 
choice. 

If he wished to take advantage of the low water, it was 
important to make haste. 

The weather continued to be fine and calm. The 
insolent sea was for a while in a gentle mood. 

Gilliatt descended, put on his shoes again, unmoored the 
cable, re-embarked and pushed out into the water. He 
used the oars, coasting the side of the rock. 

Having reached “ The Man ” rock, he examined the 
entrance to the little creek. 

A fixed, wavy line in the motionless sea, a sort of 
wrinkle, imperceptible to any eye but that of a sailor, 
marked the channel. 

Gilliatt studied for a moment its lineament, almost 
indistinct under the water ; then he held off a little in 
order to veer at ease, and steer well into channel ; and 
suddenly with a stroke of the oars he entered the little bay. 

He sounded. 

The anchorage appeared to be excellent. 

The sloop would be protected there against almost any 
of the contingencies of the season. 

The most formidable reefs have quiet nooks of this sort. 
The ports which are thus found among the breakers are 
like the hospitality of the fierce Bedouin — friendly and 
sure. 

Gilliatt placed the sloop as near as he could to “ The 
Man,” but still far enough to escape grazing the rock ; 
and he cast his two anchors. 

That done, he crossed his arms, and reflected on his 
position. 

The sloop was sheltered. Here was one problem 
solved. But another remained. Where could he now 
shelter himself ? 

He had the choice of two places — the sloop itself, with 
its comer of cabin, which was scarcely habitable : and the 
summit of ” The Man ” rock, which was not difficult to 
scale. 


262 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


From one or other of these refuges it was possible at 
low water, by jumping from rock to rock, to gain the 
passage between the Douvres where the Durande was 
fixed, almost without wetting the feet. 

But low water lasts but a short while, and all the rest 
of the time he would be cut off, either from his shelter 
or from the wreck, by more than two hundred fathoms. 
Swimming among breakers is difficult at all times ; if 
there is the least commotion in the sea it is impossible. 

He was driven to give up the idea of shelter in the sloop 
or on “ The Man.*' 

No resting-place was possible among the neighbouring 
rocks. 

The summits of the lower ones disappeared twice a day 
beneath the rising tide. 

The summits of the higher ones were constantly swept 
by the flakes of foam, and promised nothing but an 
inhospitable drenching. 

No choice remained but the wreck itself. 

Was it possible to seek refuge there ? 

Gilliatt hoped it might be. 


VII. 

A CHAMBER FOR THE VOYAGER. 

Half an hour afterwards Gilliatt, having returned to the 
wreck, climbed to the deck, went below, and descended 
into the hold, completing the summary survey of his first 
visit. 

By the help of the capstan he had raised to the deck of 
the Durande the package which he had made of the lading 
of the sloop. The capstan had worked well. Bars for 
turning it were not wanting. Gilliatt had only to take 
his choice among the heap of wreck. 

He found among the fragments a chisel, dropped, no 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 263 

doubt, from the carpenter’s box, and which he added to 
his little stock of tools. 

Besides this — for in poverty of appliances so complete 
everything counts for a little — ^he had his jack-knife in 
his pocket. 

Gilliatt worked the whole day long on the wreck, 
clearing away, propping, arranging. 

At nightfall he observed the following facts. 

The entire wreck shook in the wind. The carcass 
trembled at every step he took. There was nothing 
stable or strong except the portion of the hull jammed 
between the rocks which contained the engine. There 
the beams were powerfully supported by the granite walls. 

Fixing his home in the Durande would be imprudent. 
It would increase the weight ; but far from adding to her 
burden, it was important to hghten it. To burden the 
wreck in any way was indeed the very contrary of what 
he wanted. 

The mass of ruin required, in fact, the most careful 
management. It was like a sick man at the approach 
of dissolution. The wind would do sufficient to help it to 
its end. 

It was, moreover, unfortunate enough to be compelled 
to work there. The amount of disturbance which the 
wreck would have to withstand would necessarily distress 
it, perhaps beyond its strength. 

Besides, if any accident should happen in the night 
while Gilliatt was sleeping, he must necessarily perish 
with the vessel. No assistance was possible ; all would 
be over. In order to help the shattered vessel, it was 
absolutely necessary to remain outside it. 

How to be outside and yet near it, this was the problem. 

The difficulty became more complicated as he con- 
sidered it. 

Where could he find a shelter under such conditions ? 

Gilliatt reflected. 

There remained nothing but the two Douvres. They 
seemed hopeless enough. 


264 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

From below, it was possible to distinguish upon the 
upper plateau of the Great Douvre a sort of protuberance. 

High rocks with flattened summits, like the Great 
Douvre and “ The Man,” are a sort of decapitated peaks. 
They abound among the mountains and in the ocean. 
Certain rocks, particularly those which are met with in the 
open sea, bear marks like half-felled trees. They have 
the appearance of having received blows from a hatchet. 
They have been subjected, in fact, to the blows of the gale, 
that indefatigable pioneer of the sea. 

There are other still more profound causes of marine 
convulsions. Hence the innumerable bruises upon these 
primeval masses of granite. Some of these sea giants 
have their heads struck off. 

Sometimes these heads, from some inexplicable cause, 
do not fall, but remain shattered on the summit of the 
mutilated trunk. This singularity is by no means rare. 
The Devil’s Rock, at Guernsey, and the Table, in the 
Valley of Anweiler, illustrate some of the most surprising 
features of this strange geological enigma. 

Some such phenomena had probably fashioned the 
summit of the Great Douvre. 

If the protuberance which could be observed on the 
plateau were not a natural irregularity in the stone, it 
must necessarily be some remaining fragment of the 
shattered summit. 

Perhaps the fragment might contain some excavation 
— some hole into which a man could creep for cover. 
Gilliatt asked for no more. 

But how could he reach the plateau ? How could he 
scale that perpendicular wall, hard and polished as a 
pebble, half covered with the growth of glutinous confervas 
and having the slippery look of a soapy surface ? 

The ridge of the plateau was at least thirty feet above 
the deck of the Durande. 

Gilliatt took out of his box of tools the knotted cord, 
hooked it to his belt by the grapnel, and set to work to 
scale the Little Douvre. The ascent became more 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


265 


difficult as he climbed. He had forgotten to take off 
his shoes, a fact which increased the difficulty. With 
great labour and straining, however, he reached the point. 
Safely arrived there, he raised himself and stood erect. 
There was scarcely room for his two feet. To make it his 
lodging would be difficult. A Stylite might have con- 
tented himself there ; Gilliatt, more luxurious in his 
requirements, wanted something more commodious. 

The Little Douvre, leaning towards the great one, 
looked from a distance as if it was saluting it, and the 
space between the Douvres, which was some score of 
feet below, was only eight or ten at the highest points. 

From the spot to which he had climbed, Gilliatt saw 
more distinctly the rocky excrescence which partly 
covered the plateau of the Great Douvre. 

This plateau rose three fathoms at least above his head. 

A precipice separated him from it. The curved escarp- 
ment of the Little Douvre sloped away out of sight 
beneath him. 

He detached the knotted rope from his belt, took a 
rapid glance at the dimensions of the rock, and slung 
the grapnel up to the plateau. 

The grapnel scratched the rock, and slipped. The 
knotted rope with the hooks at its end fell down beneath 
his feet, swinging against the side of the Little Douvre. 

He renewed the attempt ; slung the rope further, 
aiming at the granite protuberance, in which he could 
perceive crevices and scratches. 

The cast was, this time, so neat and skilful, that the 
hooks caught. 

He pulled from below. A portion of the rock broke 
away, and the knotted rope with its heavy iron came 
down once more, striking the escarpment beneath his 
feet. 

He slung the grapnel a third time. 

It did not fall. 

He put a strain upon the rope ; it resisted. The 
grapnel was firmly anchored. 


266 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The hooks had caught in some fracture of the plateau 
which he could not see. 

It was necessary to trust his life to that unknown 
support. 

He did not hesitate. 

The matter was urgent. He was compelled to take 
the shortest route. 

Moreover, to descend again to the deck of the Durande, 
in order to devise some other step, was impossible. A 
slip was probable, and a fall almost certain. It was 
easier to chmb than to descend. 

Gilliatt’s movements were decisive, as are those of all 
good sailors. He never wasted force. He always pro- 
portioned his efforts to the work in hand. Hence the 
prodigies of strength which he executed with ordinary 
muscles. His biceps were no more powerful than that 
of ordinary men, but his heart was firmer. He added, 
in fact, to strength which is physical, energy which be- 
longs to the moral faculties. 

The feat to be accomplished was appalling. 

It was to cross the space between the two Douvres, 
hanging only by this slender line. 

Oftentimes in the path of duty and devotedness the 
figure of death rises before men to present these terrible 
questions : 

Wilt thou do this ? asks the shadow. 

Gilliatt tested the cord again ; the grappHng-iron held 
firm. 

Wrapping his left hand in his handkerchief, he grasped 
the knotted cord with his right hand, which he covered 
with his left ; then stretching out one foot, and striking 
out sharply with the other against the rock, in order that 
the impetus might prevent the rope twisting, he pre- 
cipitated himself from the height of the Little Douvre 
on to the escarpment of the great one. 

The shock was severe. 

There was a rebound. 

His clenched fists struck the rocks in their turn ; the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 267 

handkerchief had loosened, and they were scratched ; 
they had indeed narrowly escaped being crushed. 

GiUiatt remained hanging there a moment dizzy. 

He was sufi&ciently master of himself not to let go his 
hold of the cord. 

A few moments passed in jerks and oscillations before 
he could catch the cord with his feet ; but he succeeded 
at last. 

Recovering himself, and holding the cord at last 
between his naked feet as with two hands, he gazed into 
the depth below. 

He had no anxiety about the length of the cord, which 
had many a time served him for great heights. The 
cord, in fact, trailed upon the deck of the Durande. 

Assured of being able to descend again, he began to 
climb hand over hand, and still clinging with his feet. 

In a few moments he had gained the summit. 

Never before had any creature without wings found a 
footing there. The plateau was covered in parts with 
the dung of birds. It was an irregular trapezium, a 
mass struck off from the colossal granitic prism of the 
Great Douvre. This block was hollowed in the centre 
like a basin — a, work of the rain. 

GiUiatt, in fact, had guessed correctly. 

At the southern angle of the block he found a mass of 
superimposed rocks, probably fragments of the fallen 
summit. These rocks, looking hke a heap of giant 
paving-stones, would have left room for a wild beast, 
if one could have found its way there, to secrete himself 
between them. They supported themselves confusedly 
one against the other, leaving interstices like a heap of , 
ruins. They formed neither grottoes nor caves, but 
the pile was full of holes like a sponge. One of these 
holes was large enough to admit a man. 

This recess had a flooring of moss and a few tufts of 
grass. GiUiatt could fit himself in it as in a kind of sheath. 
The recess at its entrance was about two feet high. It 
contracted towards the bottom. Stone coffins sometimes 


268 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


have this form. The mass of rocks behind lying towards 
the south-west, the recess was sheltered from the 
showers, but was open to the cold north wind. 

Gilliatt was satisfied with the place. 

The two chief problems were solved ; the sloop had a 
harbour, and he had found a shelter. 

The chief merit of his cave was its accessibility from 
the wreck. 

The grappling-iron of the knotted cord having fallen 
between two blocks, had become firmly hooked, but 
Gilliatt rendered it more difficult to give way by rolling 
a huge stone upon it. 

He was free to operate at leisure upon the Durande. 

Henceforth he was at home. 

The Great Douvre was his dwelling ; the Durande was 
his workshop. 

Nothing was more simple for him than going to and 
fro, ascending and descending. 

He dropped down easily by the knotted cord on to 
the deck. 

The day’s work was a good one, the enterprise had 
begun well ; he was satisfied, and began to feel hungry. 

He untied his basket of provisions, opened his knife, 
cut a slice of smoked beef, took a bite out oL his brown 
loaf, drank a draught from his can of fresh water, and 
supped admirably. 

To do well and eat well are two satisfactions. A full 
stomach resembles an easy conscience. 

This supper was ended, and there was still before him 
a little more daylight. He took advantage of it to begin 
the lightening of the wreck — ^an urgent necessity. 

He had passed part of the day in gathering up the 
fragments. He put on one side, in the strong compart- 
ment which contained the machine, all that might 
become of use to him, such as wood, iron, cordage, and 
canvas. What was useless he cast into the sea. 

The cargo of the sloop hoisted on to the deck by the 
capstan, compact as he had made it, was an encumbrance. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 269 

Gilliatt surveyed the species of niche, at a height within 
his reach, in the side of the Little Douvre. These 
natural closets, not shut in, it is true, are often seen in 
the rocks. It struck him that it was possible to trust 
some stores to this dep6t, and he accordingly placed 
in the back of the recess his two boxes containing 
his tools and his clothing, and his two bags holding the 
rye-meal and the biscuit. In the front — a little too near 
the edge perhaps, but he had no other place — ^he rested 
his basket of provisions. 

He had taken care to remove from the box of clothing 
his sheepskin, his loose coat with a hood, and his water- 
proof overalls. 

To lessen the hold of the wind upon the knotted cord, 
he made the lower extremity fast to one of the riders 
of the Durande. 

The Durande being much driven in, this rider was 
bent a good deal, and it held the end of the cord as 
firmly as a tight hand. 

There was still the difficulty of the upper end of 
the cord. To control the lower part was well, but at 
the summit of the esca^ment, at the spot where the 
knotted cord met the ridge of the plateau, there was 
reason to fear that it would be fretted and worn away 
by the sharp angle of the rock. 

Gilliatt searched in the heap of rubbish in reserve, and 
took from it some rags of sailcloth, and from a bunch of 
old cables he pulled out some strands of rope-yarn with 
which he filled his pockets. 

A sailor would have guessed that he intended to bind 
with these pieces of sail-cloth and ends of yam the part 
of the knotted rope upon the edge of the rock, so as to 
preserve it from all friction — an operation which is called 

keckling.” 

Having provided himself with these things, he drew on 
his overalls over his legs, put on his waterproof coat over 
his jacket, drew its hood over his red cap, hung the 
sheepskin round his neck by the two legs, and clothed in 


270 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

this complete panoply, he grasped the cord, now firmly 
fixed to the side of the Great Douvre, and mounted to the 
assault of that sombre citadel in the sea. 

In spite of his scratched hands, Gilliatt easily regained 
the summit. 

The last pale tints of sunset were fading in the sky. It 
was night upon the sea below. A little light still fingered 
upon the height of the Douvre. 

Gilliatt took advantage of this remains of daylight to 
bind the knotted rope. He wound it round again and 
again at the part which passed over the edge of the rock, 
with a bandage of several thicknesses of canvas strongly 
tied at every turn. The whole resembled in some degree 
the padding which actresses place upon their knees, to 
prepare them for the agonies and supplications of the fifth 
act. 

This binding completely accomplished, Gilliatt rose 
from his stooping position. 

For some moments, while he had been busied in his 
task, he had had a confused sense of a singular fluttering 
in the air. 

It resembled, in the silence of the evening, the noise 
which an immense bat might make with the beating of its 
wings. 

GiUiatt raised his eyes. 

A great black circle was revolving over his head in the 
pale twilight sky. 

Such circles are seen in pictures round the heads of 
saints. These, however, are golden on a dark ground, 
while the circle around Gilliatt was dark upon a pale 
ground. The effect was strange. It spread round the 
Great Douvre like the aureole of night. 

The circle drew nearer, then retired ; grew narrower, 
and then spread wide again. 

It was an immense flight of gulls, seamews, and cor- 
morants ; a vast multitude of affrighted sea birds. 

The Great Douvre was probably their lodging, and they 
were coming to rest for the night. Gilliatt had taken 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


271 

a chamber in their home. It was evident that their 
unexpected fellow-lodger disturbed them. 

A man there was an object they had never beheld 
before. 

Their wild flutter continued for some time. 

They seemed to be waiting for the stranger to leave the 
place. 

GiUiatt followed them dreamily with his eyes. 

The flying multitude seemed at last to give up their 
design. The circle suddenly took a spiral form, and the 
cloud of sea birds came down upon “ The Man ” rock at 
the extremity of the group, where they seemed to be 
conferring and deliberating. 

GiUiatt, after settling down in his alcove of granite, and 
covering a stone for a pillow for his head, could hear the 
birds for a long time chattering one after the other, or 
croaking, as if in turns. 

Then they were silent, and all were sleepiilg — the birds 
upon their rock, GiUiatt upon his. 


VIII. 

IMPORTUN^QUE VOLUCRES. 

Gilliatt slept well ; but he was cold, and this awoke 
him from time to time. He had naturally placed his feet 
at the bottom, and his head at the entrance to his cave. 
He had not taken the precaution to remove from his 
couch a number of angular stones, which did not by any 
means conduce to sleep. 

Now and then he hdf opened his eyes. 

At intervals he heard loud noises. It was the rising 
tide entering the caverns of the rocks with a sound like 
the report of a cannon. 

All the circumstances of his position conspired to 
produce the effect of a vision. Hallucinations seemed 


/ 

272 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

to surround him. The vagueness of night increased thjs 
effect ; and Gilliatt felt himself plunged into some region 
of unrealities. He asked himself if all were not a 
dream ? 

Then he dropped to sleep again ; and this time, in a 
veritable dream, found himself at the Bfl de la Rue, at the 
Bravees, at St. Sampson. He heard Deruchette singing ; 
he was among realities. While he slept he seemed to 
wake and live ; when he awoke again he appeared to be 
sleeping. 

In truth, from this time forward he lived in a dream. 

Towards the middle of the night a confused murmur 
filled the air. Gilliatt had a vague consciousness of it even 
in his sleep. It was perhaps a breeze arising. 

Once, when awakened by a cold shiver, he opened his 
eyes a little wider than before. Clouds were moving in the 
zenith ; the moon was flying through the sky, with one 
large star following closely in her footsteps. 

Gilliatt’s mind was full of the incidents of his dreams. 
The wild outlines of things in the darkness were exag- 
gerated by this confusion with the impressions of his 
sleeping hours. 

At daybreak he was half frozen ; but he slept soundly. 

The sudden dayhght aroused him from a slumber which 
might have been dangerous. The alcove faced the rising 
sun. 

GiUiatt yawned, stretched himself, and sprang out of his 
sleeping place. 

His sleep had been so deep, that he could not at first 
recall the circumstances of the night before. 

By degrees the feeling of reality returned, and he began 
to think of breakfast. 

The weather was calm ; the sky cool and serene. The 
clouds were gone ; the night wind had cleared the horizon, 
and the sun rose brightly. Another fine day was com- 
mencing. Gilliatt felt joyful. 

He threw off his overcoat and his leggings ; rolled them 
up in the sheepskin with the wool inside, tastened the roll 


THE TOIT.ERS OF THE SEA. 273 

with a length of rope-yarn, and pushed it into the cavern 
for a shelter in case of rain. 

This done, he made his bed — ^an operation which con- 
sisted in removing the stones which had annoyed him in 
the night. 

His bed made, he sHd down the cord on to the deck of 
the Durande, and approached the niche where he had 
placed his basket of provisions. As it was very near the 
edge, the wind in the night had swept it down, and rolled 
it into the sea. 

It was evident that it would not be easy to recover it. 
There was a spirit of mischief and malice in a wind which 
had sought out his basket in that position. 

It was the commencement of hostilities. Gilliatt under- 
stood the token. 

To those who live in a state of rude familiarity with the 
sea, it becomes natural to regard the wind as an indi- 
viduality, and the rocks as sentient beings. 

Nothing remained but the biscuit and the rye-meal, 
except the shell-fish, on which the shipwrecked sailor 
had supported a lingering existence upon “ The Man ” 
rock. 

It was useless to think of subsisting by net or line 
fishing. Fish are naturally averse to the neighbourhood 
of rocks. The drag and bow net fishers would waste 
their labour among the breakers, the points of which 
would be destructive only to their nets. 

Gilliatt breakfasted on a few limpets which he plucked 
with difficulty from the rocks. He narrowly escaped 
breaking his knife in the attempt. 

While he was making his spare meal, he was sensible 
of a strange disturbance on the sea. He looked around. 

It was a swarm of gulls and seamews which had just 
alighted upon some low rocks, and were beating their 
wings, tumbling over each other, screaming, and shriek- 
ing. All were swarming noisily upon the same point. 
This horde with beaks and talons were evidently pillaging 
something. 


274 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


It was GiUiatt’s basket. 

Rolled down upon a sharp point by the wind, the 
basket had burst open. The birds had gathered round 
immediately. They were carrying oh in their beaks all 
sorts of fragments of provisions. Gilliatt recognized 
from the distance his smoked beef and his salted fish. 

It was their turn now to be aggressive. The birds had 
taken to reprisals. Gilliatt had robbed them of their 
lodging ; they deprived him of his supper. 


IX. 

THE ROCK, AND HOW GILLIATT USED IT. 

A WEEK passed. 

Although it was in the rainy season, no rain fell — a fact 
for which Gilliatt felt thankful. But the work he had 
entered upon surpassed, in appearance at least, the power 
of human hand or skill. Success appeared so improbable 
that the attempt seemed like madness. 

It is not until a task is fairly grappled with that its 
difficulties and perils become fully manifest. There is 
nothing like making a commencement for making evident 
how difficult it will be to come to the end. Every begin- 
ning is a struggle against resistance. The first step is 
an exorable undeceiver. A difficulty which we come to 
touch pricks like a thorn. 

GilHatt found himself immediately in the presence of 
obstacles. 

In order to raise the engine of the Durande from the 
wreck in which it was three-fourths buried, with any 
chance of success — in order to accomplish a salvage in 
such a place and in such a season, it seemed almost 
necessary to be a legion of men. GilHatt was alone ; a 
complete apparatus of carpenters’ and engineers’ tools 
and implements were wanted. Gilliatt had a saw, a 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


275 


hatchet, a chisel, and a hammer. He wanted both a 
good workshop and a good shed ; Gilliatt had not a roof 
to cover him. Provisions, too, were necessary, but he 
had not even bread. 

Any one who could have seen Gilliatt working on the 
rock during all that first week might have been puzzled 
to determine the nature of his operations. He seemed to 
be no longer thinking either of the Durande or the two 
Douvres. He was busy only among the breakers : he 
seemed absorbed in saving the smaller parts of the ship- 
wreck. He took advantage of every high tide to strip 
the reefs of everything which the shipwreck had dis- 
tributed among them. He went, from rock to rock, 
picking up whatever the sea had scattered — ^tatters of 
sailcloth, pieces of iron, splintei^ of panels, shattered 
planking, broken yards — ^here a beam, there a chain, 
there a pulley. 

At the same time he carefully surveyed all the recesses 
of the rocks. To his great disappointment none were 
habitable. He had suffered from the cold in the night, 
where he lodged between the stones on the summit of 
the rock, and he would gladly have found some better 
refuge. 

Two of those recesses were somewhat extensive. Al- 
though the natural pavement of rock was almost every- 
where oblique and uneven, it was possible to stand upright, 
and even to walk within them. The wind and the rain 
wandered there at will, but the highest tides did not 
reach them. They were near the Little Douvre, and were 
approachable at any time. Gilliatt decided that one 
should serve him as a storehouse, the other as a forge. 

With all the sail, rope-bands, and all the reef-earrings 
he could collect, he made packages of the fragments of 
wreck, tying up the wood and iron in bundles, and the 
canvas in parcels. He lashed all these together carefully. 
As the rising tide approached these packages, he began 
to drag them across the reefs to his storehouse. In a 
hollow of the rocks he had found a top rope, by means 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


276 

of which he had been able to haul even the large pieces 
of timber. In the same manner he dragged from the 
sea the numerous portions of chains which he found 
scattered among the breakers. 

Gilliatt worked at these tasks with astonishing activity 
and tenacity. He accomphshed whatever he attempted 
— ^nothing could withstand his ant-like perseverance. 

At the end of the week he had gathered into this 
granite warehouse of marine stores, and ranged into 
order, aU this miscellaneous and shapeless mass of salvage. 
There was a comer for the tacks of sails and a corner 
for sheets. Bow-lines were not mixed with halliards ; 
parrels were arranged according to their number of holes. 
The coverings of rope-yam, unwound from the broken 
anchorings, were tied in bunches ; the dead-eyes without 
pulleys were separated from the tackle-blocks. Belaying- 
pins, buUs-eyes, preventer-shrouds, down-hauls, snatch- 
blocks, pendants, kevels, tmsses, stoppers, sailbooms, 
if they were not completely damaged by the storm, 
occupied different compartments. All the cross-beams, 
timber-work, uprights, stanchions, mast-heads, binding- 
strakes, portlids, and clamps were heaped up apart. 
Wherever it was possible he had fixed the fragments of 
planks, from the vessel’s bottom, one in the other. 
There was no confusion between reef-points and nippers 
of the cable, nor of crow’s-feet with towlines ; nor of 
pulleys of the small with pulleys of the large ropes ; 
nor of fragments from the waist with fragments from 
the stem. A place had been reserved for a portion 
of the cat-harpings of the Durande, which had supported 
the shrouds of the top-mast and the futtock-shrouds. 
Every portion had its place. The entire wreck was there 
classed and ticketed. It was a sort of chaos in a store- 
house. 

A stay-sail, fixed by huge stones, served, though tom 
and damaged, to ^protect what the rain might have 
injured. 

Shattered as were the bows of the wreck, he had sue- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


277 

ceeded in saving the two cat-heads with their three pulley- 
wheels. 

He had found the bowsprit too, and had had much 
trouble in unrolling its gammoning ; it was very hard and 
tight, having been, according to custom, made by the 
help of the windlass, and in dry weather. Gilliatt, 
however, persevered until he had detached it, this thick 
rope promising to be very useful to him. 

He had been equally successful in discovering the little 
anchor, which had become fast in the hollow of a reef, 
where the receding tide had left it uncovered. 

In what had been Tangrouille’s cabin he had found a 
piece of chalk, which he preserved carefully. He reflected 
that he might have some marks to make. 

A fire-bucket and several pails in pretty good con- 
dition completed this stock of working materials. 

All that remained of the store of coal of the Durande he 
carried into the warehouse. 

In a week this salvage of debris was finished ; the 
rock was swept clean, and the Durande was lightened. 
Nothing remained now to burden* the hull except the 
machinery. 

The portion of the fore-side bulwarks which hung to it 
did not distress the hull. The mass hung without drag- 
ging, being partly sustained by a ledge of rock. It was, 
however, large and broad, and heavy to drag, and would 
have encumbered his warehouse too much. This bul- 
warking looked something like a boat-builder’s stocks. 
Gilhatt left it where it was. 

He had been profoundly thoughtful during all this 
labour. He had sought in vain for the figurehead — ^the 
“ doll,” as the Guernsey folks called it, of the Durande. 
It was one of the things which the waves had carried away 
for ever. Gilliatt would have given his hands to find it — 
if he had not had such peculiar need of them at that time. 

At the entrance to the storehouse and outside were 
two heaps of refuse — ^a heap of iron good for forging, and 
a heap of wood good for burning. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


278 

Gilliatt was always at work at early dawn. Except his 
time of sleep, he did not take a moment of repose. 

The wild sea birds, flying hither and thither, watched 
him at his work. 


X. 

THE FORGE. 

The warehouse completed, Gilliatt constructed his forge. 

The other recess which he had chosen had within it a 
species of passage hke a gallery in a mine of pretty good 
depth. He had had at first an idea of making this his 
lodging, but the draught was so continuous and so per- 
severing in this passage, that he had been compelled to 
give it up. This current of air, incessantly renewed, 
first gave him the notion of the forge. Since it could not 
be his chamber, he was determined that this cabin should 
be his smithy. To bend obstacles to our purposes is a 
great step towards triumph. The wind was Gilliatt’s 
enemy. He had set about making it his servant. 

The proverb applied to certain kinds of men — “ fit for 
everything, good for nothing ” — may also be applied to 
the hollows of rocks. They give no advantages gratui- 
tously. On one side we find a hollow fashioned con- 
veniently in the shape of a bath ; but it allows the water 
to run away through a fissure. Here is a rocky chamber, 
but without a roof ; here a bed of moss, but oozy with 
wet ; here an arm-chair, but one of hard stone. 

The forge which Gilliatt intended was roughly sketched 
out by nature ; but nothing could be more troublesome 
than to reduce this rough sketch to manageable shape, to 
transform this cavern into a laboratory and smith’s shop. 
With three or four large rocks, shaped like a funnel, and 
ending in a narrow fissure, chance had constructed there 
a species of vast ill-shapen blower, of very different power 
to those huge old, forge bellows of fourteen feet long. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


279 


which poured out at every breath ninety-eight thousand 
inches of air. This was quite a different sort of con- 
struction. The proportions of the hurricane cannot be 
definitely measured. 

This excess of force was an embarrassment. The 
incessant draught was difficult to regulate. 

The cavern had two inconveniences : the wind traversed 
it from end to end ; so did the water. 

This was not the water of the sea, but a continual little 
trickling stream, more like a spring than a torrent. 

The foam, cast incessantly by the surf upon the rocks, 
and sometimes more than a hundred feet in the air, had 
filled with sea water a natural cave situated among the 
high rocks overlooking the excavation. The over- 
flowings of this reservoir caused, a little behind the 
escarpment, a fall of water of about an inch in breadth, 
and descending four or five fathoms. An occasional 
contribution from the rains also helped to fill the reser- 
voir. From time to time a passing cloud dropped a 
shower into the rocky basin, always overflowing. The 
water was brackish, and unfit to drink, but clear. This 
rill of water fell in graceful drops from the extremities 
of the long marine grasses, as from the ends of a length 
of hair. 

He was struck with the idea of making this water serve 
to regulate the draught in the cave. By the means of a 
funnel made of planks roughly and hastily put together 
to form two or three pipes, one of which was fitted with a 
Valve, and of a large tub arranged as a lower reservoir, 
without checks or counterweight, and completed solely 
by air-tight stuffing above and air-holes below, Gilliatt, 
who, as we have already said, was handy at the forge 
and at the mechanic's bench, succeeded in constructing, 
instead of the forge-bellows, which he did not possess, 
an apparatus less perfect than what is known nowadays 
by the name of a “ cagniardelle,” but less rude than what 
the people of the Pyrenees anciently called a trompe.” 

He had some rye-meal, and he manufactured with it 


28o 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


some paste. He had also some white rope, which picked 
out into tow. With this paste and tow, and some bits 
of wood, he stopped all the crevices of the rock, leaving 
only a little air passage made of a powder-flask which he 
had found aboard the Durande, and which had served for 
loading the signal gun. This powder-flask was directed 
horizontally to a large stone, which Gilliatt made the 
hearth of the forge. A stopper made of a piece of tow 
served to close it in case of need. 

After this, he heaped up the wood and coal upon the 
hearth, struck his steel against the bare rock, caught a 
spark upon a handful of loose tow, and having ignited it, 
soon lighted his forge fire. 

He tried the blower : it worked well. 

Gilliatt felt the pride of a Cyclops ; he was the master 
of air, water, and fire. Master of the air ; for he had 
given a kind of lungs to the wind, and changed the rude 
draught into a useful blower. Master of water, for he had 
converted the little cascade into a “ trompe.” Master 
of fire, for out of this moist rock he had struck a flame. 

The cave being almost ever3rwhere open to the sky, the 
smoke issued freely, blackening the curved escarpment. 
The rocks which seemed destined for ever to receive only 
the white foam, became now familiar with the blackening 
smoke. 

Gilliatt selected for an anvil a large smooth round 
stone, of about the required shape and dimensions. It 
formed a base for the blows of his hammer ; but one that 
might fly, and was very dangerous. One of the ex- 
tremities of this block, rounded and ending in a point, 
might, for want of anything better, serve instead of a 
conoid bicom ; but the other kind of bicom of the 
P5n-amidal form was wanting. It was the ancient stone 
anvil of the Troglodytes. The surface, polished by the 
waves, had almost the firmness of steel. 

He regretted not having brought his anvil. As he did 
not know that the Durande had fcen broken in two by the 
tempest, he had hoped to find the carpenter’s chest and 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


281 


all his tools generally kept in the fore hold. But it was 
precisely the forepart of the vessel which had been carried 
away. 

These two excavations which he had found in the rock 
were contiguous. The warehouse and the forge com- 
municated with each other. 

Every evening, when his work was ended, he supped on 
a little biscuit, moistened in water, a sea-urchin or a crab, 
or a few chdtaignes de mer, the only food to be found 
among those rocks ; and shivering like his knotted cord, 
mounted again to sleep in his cell upon the Great Douvre. 

The very materialism of his daily occupation in- 
creased the kind of abstraction in which he lived. To be 
steeped too deeply in realities is in itself a cause of 
visionary moods. His bodily labour, with its infinite 
variety of details, detracted nothing from the sensation 
of stupor which arose from the strangeness of his position 
and his work. Ordinary bodily fatigue is a thread which 
binds man to the earth ; but the very peculiarity of the 
enterprise he was engaged in kept him in a sort of ideal 
twilight region. There were times when he seemed to be 
strikuig blows with his hammer in the clouds. At other 
moments his tools appeared to him like arms. He had 
a singular feeling, as if he was repressing or providing 
against some latent danger of attack. Untwisting ropes, 
unravelling threads of yam in a sail, or propping up a 
couple of beams, appeared to him at such times like 
fashioning engines of war. The thousand minute pains 
which he took about his salvage operations produced at 
last in his mind the effect of precautions against aggres- 
sions little concealed and easy to anticipate. He did 
not know the words which express the ideas, but he per- 
ceived them. His instincts became less and less those 
of the worker ; his habits more and more those of the 
savage man. 

His business there was to subdue and direct the powers 
of nature. He had an indistinct perception of it. A 
strange enlargement of his ideas I 


282 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Around him, far as eye could reach, was the vast 
prospect of endless labour wasted and lost. Nothing is 
more disturbing to the mind than the contemplation of the 
diffusion of forces at work in the unfathomable and 
illimitable space of the ocean. The mind tends naturally 
to seek the object of these forces. The unceasing move- 
ment in space, the unwearying sea, the clouds that seem 
ever hurrying somewhere, the vast mysterious prodigality 
of effort — all this is a problem. Whither does this per- 
petual movement tend ? What do these winds construct? 
What do these giant blows build up ? These bowlings, 
shocks, and sobbings of the storm, what do they end in ? 
and what is the business of this tumult ? The ebb and 
flow of these questionings is eternal, as the flux and 
reflux of the sea itself. GilHatt could answer for himself ; 
his work he knew, but the agitation which surrounded 
him far and wide at all times perplexed him confusedly 
with its eternal questionings. Unknown to himself, 
mechanically, by the mere pressure of external things, 
and without any other effect than a strange, unconscious 
bewilderment, Gilliatt, in this dreamy mood, blended 
his own toil somehow with the prodigious wasted labour 
of the sea-waves. How, indeed, in that position, could 
he escape the influence of that mystery of the dread, 
laborious ocean ? how do other than meditate, so far as 
meditation was possible, upon the vacillation of the waves, 
the perseverance of the foam, the imperceptible wearing 
down of rocks, the furious beatings of the four winds ? 
How terrible that perpetual recommencement, that 
ocean bed, those Danaides-like clouds, all that travail 
and weariness for no end ! 

For no end ? Not so ! But for what ? O Thou 
Infinite Unknown, Thou only knowest ! 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


283 


XI. 

DISCOVERY. 

A ROCK near the coast is sometimes visited by men ; a 
rock in mid-ocean never. What object could any one 
have there ? No supplies can be drawn thence ; no 
fruit-trees are there, no pasturage, no beasts, no springs 
of water fitted for man’s use. It stands aloft, a rock 
with its steep sides and summits above water, and its 
sharp points below. Nothing is to be found there but 
inevitable shipwreck. 

This kind of rocks, which in the old sea dialect were 
called I soles, are, as we have said, strange places. The sea 
is alone there ; she works her own will. No token of 
terrestrial life disturbs her. Man is a terror to the sea ; 
she is shy of his approach, and hides from him her deeds. 
But she is bolder among the lone sea rocks. The ever- 
lasting soliloquy of the waves is not troubled there. She 
labours at the rock, repairs its damage, sharpens its 
peaks, makes them rugged or renews them. She pierces 
the granite, wears down the soft stone, and denudes the 
hard ; she rummages, dismembers, bores, perforates, 
and grooves ; she fills the rock with cells, and makes it 
sponge-like, hollows out the inside, or sculptures it 
without. In that secret mountain which is hers she 
makes to herself caves, sanctuaries, palaces. She has 
her splendid and monstrous vegetation, composed of 
floating plants which bite, and of monsters which take 
root ; and she hides away all this terrible magnificence 
in the twilight of her deeps. Among the isolated rocks 
no eye watches over her ; no spy embarrasses her move- 
ments. It is there that she develops at liberty her 
m5;^terious side, which is inaccessible to man. Here she 
keeps all strange secretions of life ; here that the un- 
known wonders of the sea are assembled. 

Promontories, forelands, capes, headlands, breakers. 


284 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


and shoals are veritable constructions. The geological 
changes of the earth are trifling compared with the vast 
operations of the ocean. These breakers, these habita- 
tions in the sea, these pyramids, and spouts of the foam 
are the practisers of a mysterious art which the author 
of this book has somewhere called “ the Art of Nature.” 
Their style is known by its vastness. The effects of 
chance seem here design. Its works are multiform. 
They abound in the mazy entanglement of the rock-coral 
groves, the sublimity of the cathedral, the extravagance 
of the pagoda, the amplitude of the mountain, the 
delicacy of the jeweller’s work, the horror of the sepulchre. 
They are filled with cells like the wasps’ nest, with dens 
like menageries, withsubterranean passages like the haunts 
of moles, with dungeons like Bastiles, with ambuscades 
hke a camp. They have their doors, but they are barri- 
caded ; their columns, but they are shattered ; their 
towers, but they are tottering ; their bridges, but they are 
broken. Their compartments are unaccommodating ; 
these are fitted for the birds only, those only for fish. 
They are impassable. Their architectural style is vari- 
able and inconsistent : it regards or disregards at will the 
laws of equihbrium, breaks off, stops short, begins in the 
form of an archivolt, and ends in an architrave, block on 
block. Enceladus is the mason. A wondrous science of 
dynamics exhibits here its problems ready solved. Fear- 
ful overhanging blocks threaten, but fall not : the human 
mind cannot guess what power supports their bewilder- 
ing masses. Blind entrances, gaps, and ponderous sus- 
pensions multiply and vary infinitely. The laws which 
regulate this Babel baffle human induction. The great 
unknown architect plans nothing, but succeeds in all. 
Rocks massed together in confusion form a monstrous 
monument, defy reason, yet maintain equilibrium. Here 
is something more than strength : it is eternity. But 
order is wanting. The wild tumult of the waves seems to 
have passed into the wilderness of stone. It is like a 
tempest petrified and fixed for ever. Nothing is more 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


285 

impressive than that wild architecture — always standing, 
yet always seeming to fall ; in which everything appears 
to give support, and yet to withdraw it. A struggle 
between opposing lines has resulted in the construction 
of an edifice, filled with traces of the efforts of those old 
antagonists, the ocean and the storm. 

This architecture has its terrible masterpieces, of which 
the Douvres rock was one. 

The sea had fashioned and perfected it with a sinister 
solicitude. The snarling waters Hcked it into shape. It 
was hideous, treacherous, dark, full of hollows. 

It had a complete system of submarine caverns ramify- 
ing and losing themselves in unfathomed depths. Some 
of the orifices of this labyrinth of passages were left ex- 
posed by the low tides. A man might enter there, but 
at his risk and peril. 

Gilliatt determined to explore all these grottoes, for the 
purpose of his salvage labour. There was not one which 
was not repulsive. Everywhere about the caverns that 
strange aspect of an abattoir, those singular traces of 
slaughter, appeared again in all the exaggeration of the 
ocean. No one who has not seen, in excavations of 
this kind .upon the walls of everlasting granite, these 
hideous natural frescoes, can form a notion of their 
singularity. 

These pitiless caverns, too, were false and sly. Woe 
betide him who would loiter there ! The rising tide filled 
them to their roofs. 

Rock limpets and edible mosses abounded among 
them. 

They were obstructed by quantities of shingle, heaped 
together in their recesses. Some of their huge smooth 
stones weighed more than a ton. They were of every 
proportion and of every hue ; but the greater part were 
blood-coloured. Some, covered with a hairy and gluti- 
nous seaweed, seemed like large green moles boring a way 
into the rock. 

Several of the caverns terminated abruptly in the form 


286 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


of a demi-cupola. Others, main arteries of a mysterious 
circulation, lengthened out in the rock in dark and tortuous 
fissures. They w^re the alleys of the submarine city ; but 
they gradually contracted from their entrances, and at 
length left no way for a man to pass. Peering in by the 
help of a lighted torch, he could see nothing but dark 
hollows dripping with moisture. 

One day, Gilhatt, exploring, ventured into one of these 
fissures. The state of the tide favoured the attempt. 
It was a beautiful day of calm and sunshine. There was 
no fear of any accident from the sea to increase the 
danger. 

Two necessities, as we have said, compelled him to 
undertake these explorations. He had to gather frag- 
ments of wreck and other things to aid him in his labour, 
and to search for crabs and cra5dish for his food. Shell- 
fish had begun to fail him on the rocks. 

The fissure was narrow, and the passage difficult. 
Gilliatt could see daylight beyond. He made an effort, 
contorted himself as much as he could, and penetrated into 
the cave as far as he was able. 

He had reached, without suspecting it, the interior of 
the rock, upon the point of which Clubin had steered the 
Durande. Though abrupt and almost inaccessible with- 
out, it was hollowed within. It was full of galleries, pits, 
and chambers, like the tomb of an Egyptian king. This 
network of caverns was one of the most complicated of all 
that labyrinth, a labour of the water, the undermining 
of the restless sea. The branches of the subterranean 
maze probably communicated with the sea without by 
more than one issue — some gaping at the level of the 
waves, the others profound and invisible. It was near 
here, but Gilliatt knew it not, that Clubin had dived into 
the sea. 

In this crocodile cave — ^where crocodiles, it is true, were 
not among the dangers — Gilliatt wound about, clam- 
bered, struck his head occasionally, bent low and rose 
again, lost his footing and regained it many times, advan- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


287 

cing laboriously. By degrees the gallery widened ; a 
glimmer of daylight appeared, and he found himself 
suddenly at the entrance to a cavern of a singular kind. 


XII. 

THE INTERIOR OF AN EDIFICE UNDER THE SEA. 

The gleam of daylight was fortunate. 

One step further, and Gilliatt must have fallen into a 
pool, perhaps without bottom. The waters of these 
cavern pools are so cold and paralyzing as to prove fatal 
to the strongest swimmers. 

There is, moreover, no means of remounting or of 
hanging on to any part of their steep walls. 

He stopped short. The crevice from which he had just 
issued ended in a narrow and shppery projection, a species 
of corbel in the peaked wall. He leaned against the side 
and surveyed it. 

He was in a large cave. Over his head was a roofing 
not unlike the inside of a vast skull, which might have 
been imagined to have been recently dissected. The 
dripping ribs of the striated indentations of the roof 
seemed to imitate the branching fibres and jagged sutures 
of the bony cranium. A stony ceiling and a watery floor. 
The rippled waters between the four walls of the cave were 
like wavy paving tiles. The grotto was shut in on all 
sides. Not a window, not even an air-hole visible. No 
breach in the wall, no crack in the roof. The light came 
from below and through the water — a strange, sombre 
light. 

Gilliatt, the pupils of whose eyes had contracted during 
his explorations of the dusky corridor, could distinguish 
everything about him in the pale glimmer. 

He was familiar, from having often visited them, with 
the caves of Plemont in Jersey, the Creux-Maill4 at 


288 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Guernsey, the Boutiques at Sark ; but none of these 
marvellous caverns could compare with the subterranean 
and submarine chamber into which he had made his 
way. 

Under the water at his feet he could see a sort of 
drowned arch. This arch, a natural ogive, fashioned by 
the waves, was ghttering between its two dark and pro- 
found supports. It was by this submerged porch that 
the daylight entered into the cavern from the open sea. 
A strange light shooting upward from a gulf. 

The glimmer spread out beneath the waters like a 
large fan, and was reflected on the rocks. Its direct rays, 
divided into long, broad shafts, appeared in strong relief 
against the darkness below, and becoming brighter or 
more dull from one rock to another, looked as if seen here 
and there through plates of glass. There was light in that 
cave, it is true ; but it was the light that was unearthly. 
The beholder might have dreamed that he had descended 
in some other planet. The glimmer was an enigma, like 
the glaucous light from the eye-pupil of a Sphinx. The 
whole cave represented the interior of a death’s-head of 
enormous proportions and of a strange splendour. The 
vault was the hollow of the brain, the arch the mouth ; 
the sockets of the eyes were wanting. The cavern, 
alternately swallowing and rendering up the flux and 
reflux through its mouth wide opened to the full noonday 
without, seemed to drink in the light and vomit forth 
bitterness : a type of some beings intelligent and evil. 
The light, in traversing this inlet through the vitreous 
medium of the sea-water, became green, like a ray of 
starlight from Aldebaran. The water, filled with the 
moist light, appeared like a liquid emerald. A tint of 
aqua-marina of marvellous delicacy spread a soft hue 
throughout the cavern. The roof, with its cerebral lobes, 
and its rampant ramifications, like the fibres of nerves, 
gave out a tender reflection of chrysoprase. The ripples 
reflected on the roof were falling in order and dissolving 
again incessantly, and enlarging and contracting their 


THE TOILERS OF 1 HE SEA. 


289 

glittering scales in a mysterious and mazy dance. They 
gave the beholder an impression of something weird and 
spectral : he wondered what prey secured, or what ex- 
pectation about to be realized, moved with a joyous thrill 
this magnificent network of living fire. From the pro- 
jections of the vault and the angles of the rock hung 
lengths of delicate fibrous plants, bathing their roots pro- 
bably through the granite in some upper pool of water, 
and distilling from their silky ends, one after the other, a 
drop of water like a pearl. These drops fell in the water 
now and then with a gentle splash. The effect of the 
scene was singular. Nothing more beautiful could be 
imagined ; nothing more mournful could an 3 rwhere be 
found. 

It was a wondrous palace, in which death sat smiling 
and content. 


XIII. 

WHAT WAS SEEN THERE, AND WHAT PERCEIVED DIMLY. 

A PLACE of shade, which yet was dazzling to the eyes — > 
such was this surprising cavern. 

The beating of the sea made itself felt throughout the 
cavern. The oscillation without raised and depressed 
the level of the waters within, with the regularity of 
respiration. A mysterious spirit seemed to fill this great 
organism, as it swelled and subsided in silence. 

The water had a magical transparency, and Gilliatt dis- 
tinguished at various depths submerged recesses, and 
surfaces of jutting rocks ever of a deeper and deeper 
green. Certain dark hollows, too, were there, probably 
too deep for soundings. 

On each side of the submarine porch rude elliptical 
arches, filled with shallows, indicated the position of small 
lateral caves, low alcoves of the central cavern, accessible, 
perhaps, at certain tides. These openings had roofs in the 
10 


290 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


form of inclined planes, and at angles more or less acute. 
Little sandy beaches of a few feet wide, laid bare by the 
action of the water, stretched inward, and were lost in 
these recesses. 

Here and there seaweeds of more than a fathom in 
length undulated beneath the water, hke the waving of 
long tresses in the wind ; and there were glimpses of a 
forest of sea-plants. 

Above and below the surface of the water, the wall of 
the cavern from top to bottom — ^from the vault down to 
the depth at which it became invisible — ^was tapestried 
with that prodigious efflorescence of the sea, rarely per- 
ceived by human eyes, which the old Spanish navigators 
called praderias del mar. A luxuriant moss, having all 
the tints of the olive, enlarged and concealed the pro- 
tuberances of granite. From all the jutting points 
swung the thin fluted strips of varech, which sailors use 
as their barometers. The light breath which stirred in 
the cavern waved to and fro their glossy bands. 

Under these vegetations there showed themselves 
from time to time some of the rarest hijoux of the casket 
of the ocean — ivory shells, strombi, purple-fish, univalves, 
struthiolaires, turriculated cerites. The bell - shaped 
limpet shells, like tiny huts, were everywhere adhering 
to the rocks, distributed in settlements, in the alleys 
between which prowled oscabrions, those beetles of the 
sea. A few large pebbles found their way into the 
cavern ; shell-fish took refuge there. The Crustacea 
are the grandees of the sea, who, in their lacework and 
embroidery avoid the rude contact of the pebbly crowd. 
The glittering heap of their shells, in certain spots under 
the wave, gave out singular irradiations, amidst which 
the eye caught glimpses of confused azure and gold, and 
mother-of-pearl, of every tint of the water. 

Upon the side of the cavern, a httle above the water- 
line, a magnificent and singular plant, attaching itself, 
like a fringe, to the border of seaweed, continued and 
completed it. This plant, thick, fibrous, inextricably 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


291 


intertwined, and almost black, exhibited to the eye large 
confused and dusky festoons, ever5rwhere dotted with 
innumerable httle flowers of the colour of lapis-lazuh. In 
the water they seemed to glow like small blue flames. 
Out of the water they were flowers ; beneath it they were 
sapphires. The water, rising and inundating the basement 
of the grotto clothed with these plants, seemed to cover 
the rock with gems. 

At every swelling of the wave these flowers increased 
in splendour, and at every subsidence grew dull again. 
So it is with the destiny of man : aspiration is hfe, the 
outbreathing of jthe spirit is death. 

One of the marvels of the cavern was the rock itself. 
Forming here a wall, there an arch, and here again a 
pillar or pilaster, it was in places rough and bare, and 
sometimes close beside was wrought with the most 
delicate natural carving. Strange evidences of mind 
mingled with the massive stolidity of the granite. It was 
the wondrous art-work of the ocean. Here a sort of panel, 
cut square, and covered with round embossments in 
various positions, simulated a vague bas-relief. Before 
this sculpture, with its obscure designs, a man might have 
dreamed of Prometheus roughly sketching for Michael 
Angelo. It seemed as if that great genius with a few 
blows of his mallet could have finished the indistinct 
labours of the giant. In other places the rock was 
damasked like a Saracen buckler, or engraved like a 
Florentine vase. There were portions which appeared 
like Corinthian brass ; then like arabesques, as on the door 
of a mosque ; then like runic stones with obscure and 
mystic prints of claws. Plants with twisted creepers and 
tendrils, crossing and recrossing upon the groundwork 
of golden lichens, covered it with filigree. The grotto 
resembled in some wise a Moorish palace. It was a union 
of barbarism and of goldsmith’s work, with the imposing 
and rugged architecture of the elements. 

The magnificent stains and moulderings of the sea 
covered, as with velvet, the angles of granite. The 


292 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


escarpments were festooned with large-flowered bind- 
weed, sustaining itself with graceful ease, and ornament- 
ing the walls as by intelligent design. Wall-pellitories 
showed their strange clusters in tasteful arrangement. 
The wondrous light which came from beneath the water, 
at once a submarine twilight and an Elysian radiance, 
softened down and blended all harsh lineaments. Every 
wave was a prism. The outlines of things under these 
rainbow-tinted undulations produced the chromatic effects 
of optical glasses made too convex. Solar spectra shot 
through the waters. Fragments of rainbows seemed 
floating in that transparent dawn. Els^here — ^in other 
corners — ^there was discernible a kind of moonlight in the 
water. Every kind of splendour seemed to mingle there, 
forming a strange sort of twilight. Nothing could be 
more perplexing or enigmatical than the sumptuous 
beauties of this cavern. Enchantment reigned over all. 
The fantastic vegetation, the rude masonry of the place, 
seemed to harmonize. 

Was it daylight which entered by this casement be- 
neath the sea ? Was it indeed water which trembled 
in this dusky pool ? Were not these arched roofs and 
porches fashioned out of sunset clouds to imitate a 
cavern to men’s eyes? What stone was that beneath 
the feet ? Was not this solid shaft about to melt and 
pass into thin air ? What was that cunning jewellery 
of glittering shells, half seen beneath the wave ? How 
far away were life, and the green earth, and human 
faces ? What strange enchantment haunted that 
mystic twilight ? What blind emotion, mingling its 
sympathies with the uneasy restlessness of plants be- 
neath the wave ? 

At the extremity of the cavern, which was oblong, rose 
a Cyclopean archivolt, singularly exact in form. It was 
a species of cave within a cave, of tabernacle within a 
sanctuary. Here, behind a sheet of bright verdure, inter- 
posed like the veil of a temple, arose a stone out of the 
waves, having square sides, and bearing some resem- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


293 


blance to an altar. The water surrounded it in all parts. 
It seemed as if a goddess had just descended from it. One 
might have dreamed chere that some celestial form 
beneath that crypt or upon that altar dwelt for ever 
pensive in naked beauty, but grew invisible at the ap- 
proach of mortals. It was hard to conceive that majestic 
chamber without a vision within. The day-dream of 
the intruder might evoke again the marvellous apparition. 
A flood of chaste light falling upon white shoulders 
scarcely seen ; a forehead bathed with the light of 
dawn ; an 0 l 5 mipian visage oval-shaped ; a bust full of 
mysterious grace ; arms modestly drooping ; tresses 
unloosened in the aurora ; a body delicately modelled of 
pure whiteness, half wrapped in a sacred cloud, with 
the glance of a virgin ; a Venus rising from the sea, or 
Eve issuing from chaos — such was the dream which filled 
the mind. 

The beauty of the recess seemed made for this celestial 
presence. It was for the sake of this deity, this fairy of 
the pearl caverns, this queen of the Zephyrs, this Grace 
bom of the waves, it was for her — ^as the mind, at least, 
imagined — ^that this subterranean dwelling had been thus 
religiously walled in, so that nothing might ever trouble 
the reverent shadows and the majestic silence round 
about that divine spirit. 

Gilliatt, who was a kind of seer amid the secrets of 
nature, stood there musing and sensible of confused 
emotions. 

Suddenly, at a few feet below him, in the delightful 
transparence of that water like liquid jewels, he became 
sensible of the approach of something of m57stic shape. A 
species of long ragged band was moving amidst the 
oscillation of the waves. It did not float, but darted 
about of its own will. It had an object ; was advancing 
somewhere rapidly. The object had something of the 
form of a jester’s bauble with points, which hung flabby 
and undulating. It seemed covered with a dust incapable 
of being washed away by the water. It was more than 


294 the toilers OF THE SEA. 

horrible : it was foul. The beholder felt that it was 
something monstrous. It was a hving thing ; unless, 
indeed, it were but an illusion, (t seemed to be seeking 
the darker portion of the cavern, where at last it vanished. 
The heavy shadows grew darker as its sinister form glided 
into them, and disappeared. 


BOOK II.— THE LABOUR. 


I. 

THE RESOURCES OF ONE WHO HAS NOTHING. 

The cavern did not easily part with its explorers. The 
entry had been difficult ; going back was more difficult 
still. Gilliatt, however, succeeded in extricating himself ; 
but he did not return there. He had found nothing of 
what he was in quest of, and he had not the time to 
indulge curiosity. 

He put the forge in operation at once. Tools were 
wanting ; he set to work and made them. 

For fuel he had the wreck ; for motive force the water ; 
for his bellows the wind ; for his anvil a stone ; for art 
his instinct ; for power his will. 

He entered with ardour upon his sombre labours. 

The weather seemed to smile upon his work. It 
continued to be dry and free from equinoctial gales. 
The month of March had come, but it was tranquil. The 
days grew longer. The blue of the sky, the gentleness of 
all the movements of the scene, the serenity of the noon- 
tide, seemed to exclude the idea of mischief. The waves 
danced merrily in the sunlight. A Judas kiss is the first 
step to treachery ; of such caresses the ocean is prodigal. 
Her smile, like that of woman’s sometimes, cannot be 
trusted. 

There was little wind. The hydraulic bellows worked 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


296 

all the better for that reason. Much wind would have 
embarrassed rather than aided it. Gilliatt had a saw ; 
he manufactured for himself a file. With the saw he 
attacked the wood ; with the file the metal. Then he 
availed himself of the two iron hands of the smith — ^the 
pincers and the pliers. The pincers gripe, the pliers 
handle ; the one is hke the closed hand, the other like the 
fingers. By degrees he made for himself a number of 
auxiliaries, and constructed his armour. With a piece 
of hoop-wood he made a screen for his forge-fire. 

One of his principal labours was the sorting and repair 
o'f pulleys. He mended both the blocks and the sheaves 
of tackle. He cut down the irregularities of all broken 
joists, and reshaped the extremities. He had, as we have 
said, for the necessities of his carpentry, a quantity of 
pieces of wood, stored away, and arranged according to 
the forms, the dimensions, and the nature of their grain ; 
the oak on one side, the pine on the other ; the short 
pieces like riders separated from the straight pieces like 
binding strakes. This formed his reserve of supports and 
levers, of which he might stand in great need at any 
moment. 

Any one who intends to construct hoisting tackle 
ought to provide himself with beams and small cables. 
But that is not sufficient. He must have cordage. 
Gilliatt restored the cables, large and small. He 
frayed out the tattered sails, and succeeded in con- 
verting them into an excellent yam, of which he made 
twine. With this he joined the ropes. The joins, how- 
ever, were liable to rot. It was necessary, therefore, to 
hasten to make use of these cables. He had only been 
able to make white tow, for he was without tar. 

The ropes mended, he proceeded to repair the chains. 

Thanks to the lateral point of the stone anvil, which 
served the part of the conoid bicom, he was able to forge 
rings rude in shape but strong. With these he fastened 
together the severed lengths of chains, and made long 
pieces. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


297 


To work at a forge without assistance is something more 
than troublesome. He succeeded nevertheless. It is 
true that he had only to forge and shape articles of com- 
paratively small size, which he was able to handle with 
the pliers in one hand, while he hammered with the other. 

He cut into lengths the iron bars of the captain’s bridge 
on which Clubin used to pass to and fro from paddle-box 
to paddle-box giving his orders ; forged at one extremity 
of each piece a point, and at the other a flat head. By 
this means he manufactured large nails of about a foot 
in length. These nails, much used in pontoon-making, 
are useful in fixing anything in rocks. 

What was his object in all these labours ? We shall see. 

He was several times compelled to renew the blade of 
his hatchet and the teeth of his saw. For renotching 
the saw he had manufactured a three-sided file. 

Occasionally he made use of the capstan of the Durande. 
The hook of the chain broke ; he made another. 

By the aid of his pliers and pincers, and by using his 
chisel as a screwdriver, he set to work to remove the two 
paddle-wheels of the vessel — an object which he accom- 
plished. This was rendered practicable by reason of a 
peculiarity in their construction. The paddle-boxes 
which covered them served him to stow them' away. 
With the planks of these paddle-boxes he made two cases 
in which he deposited the two paddles, piece by piece, 
each part being carefully numbered. 

His lump of chalk became precious for this purpose. 

He kept the two cases upon the strongest part of the 
wreck. 

When these preliminaries were completed, he found 
himself face to face with the great difficulty. The prob- 
lem of the engine of the Durande was now clearly before 
him. 

Taking the paddle-wheels to pieces had proved practi- 
cable. It was very different with the machinery. 

In the first place, he was almost entirely ignorant of 
the details of the mechanism. Working thus blindly 


298 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


he might do some irreparable damage. Then, even in 
attempting to dismember it, if he had ventured on that 
course, far other tools would be necessary than such as 
he could fabricate with a cavern for a forge, a wind- 
draught for bellows, and a stone for an anvil. In 
attempting, therefore, to take to pieces the machinery, 
there was the risk of destroying it. 

The attempt seemed at first sight wholly impracticable. 

The apparent impossibility cif the project rose before 
him like a stone wall, blocking further progress. 

What was to be done ? 


II. 

PREPARATIONS. 

Gilliatt had a notion. 

Since the time of the caij>enter-mason of Salbris, who, 
in the sixteenth century, in the dark ages of science — 
long before Amontons had discovered the first law of 
electricity, or Lahire the second, or Coulomb the third — 
without other helper than a child, his son, with ill- 
fashioned tools, in the chamber of the great clock of La 
Charite-sur-Loire, resolved at one stroke five or six 
problems in statics and dynamics inextricably intervolved 
like the wheels in a block of carts and wagons — since the 
time of that grand and marvellous achievement of the 
poor workman, who found means, without breaking a 
single piece of wire, without throwing one of the teeth 
of the wheels out of gear, to lower in one piece, by a 
marvellous simplification, from the second story of the 
clock-tower to the first, that massive monitor of the 
hours, made all of iron and brass, “ large as the room in 
which the man watches at night from the tower,” with 
its motion, its cylinders, its barrels, its drum, its hooks, 
and its weights, the barrel of its spring steelyard, its 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


399 


horizontal pendulum, the holdfasts of its escapement, 
its reels of large and small chains, its stone weights, one of 
which weighed five hundred pounds, its bells, its peals, 
its jacks that strike the hours — since the days, I say, 
of the man who accomplished this miracle, and of whom 
posterity knows not even the name, nothing that could 
be compared with the project which Gilliatt was medi- 
tating had ever been attempted. 

The ponderousness, the delicacy, the involvement of 
the difficulties were not less in the machinery of the 
Durande than in the clock of La Charit^-sur-Loire. 

The untaught mechanic had his helpmate — ^his son ; 
Gilliatt was alone. 

A crowd gathered together from Meung-sur-Loire, from 
Nevers, and even from Orleans, able at time of need to 
assist the mason of Salbris, and to encourage him with 
their friendly voices. Gilliatt had around him no voices 
but those of the wind, no crowd but the assemblage of 
waves. 

There is nothing more remarkable than the timidity of 
ignorance, unless it be its temerity. When ignorance 
becomes daring, she has sometimes a sort of compass 
within herself — the intuition of the truth, clearer often- 
times in a simple mind than in a learned brain. 

Ignorance invites to an attempt. It is a state of 
wonderment, which, with its concomitant curiosity, 
forms a power. Knowledge often enough disconcerts 
and makes overcautious. Gama, had he known what 
lay before him, would have recoiled before the Cape of 
Storms. If Columbus had been a great geographer, he 
might have failed to discover America. 

The second successful climber of Mont Blanc was the 
savant Saussure, the first the goatherd Balmat. 

These instances, I admit, are exceptions, which detract 
nothing from science, which remains the rule. The 
ignorant man may discover, it is the learned who invent. 

The sloop was still at anchor in the creek of ** The 
Man ” rock, where the sea left it in peace, Gilliatt, as 


300 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA 


will be remembered, had arranged everything for main- 
taining constant communication with it. He visited the 
sloop and measured her beam carefully in several parts, 
but particularly her midship frame. Then he returned 
to the Durande and measured the diameter of the floor 
of the engine-room. This diameter, of course, without 
the paddles, was two feet less than the broadest part of 
the deck of his bark. The machinery, therefore, might 
be put aboard the sloop. 

But how could it be got there ? 


III. 

gilliatt's masterpiece comes to the rescue of 

LETHIERRY. 

Any fisherman who had been mad enough to loiter in that 
season in the neighbourhood of Gilhatt’s labours about 
this time would have been repaid for his hardihood by 
a singular sight between the two Douvres. 

Before his eyes would have appeared four stout beams, 
at equal distances, stretching from one Douvre to the 
other, and apparently forced into the rock, which is the 
firmest of all holds. On the Little Douvre their ex- 
tremities were laid and buttressed upon the projections 
of rock. On the great Douvre they had been driven in 
by blows of a hammer, by the powerful hand of a work- 
man standing upright upon the beam itself. These sup- 
ports were a httle longer than the distance between the 
rocks. Hence the firmness of their hold, and hence 
also their slanting position. They touched the Great 
Douvre at an acute, and the Little Douvre at an obtuse 
angle. Their inclination was only slight ; but it was 
unequal, which was a defect. But for this defect, they 
might have been supposed to be prepared to receive the 
planking of a deck. To these four beams were attached 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


301 


four sets of hoisting apparatus, each having its pendant 
and its tackle-fall, with the bold peculiarity of having 
the tackle-blocks with two sheaves at one extremity of 
the beam, and the simple pulleys at the opposite end. 
This distance, which was too great not to be perilous, 
was necessitated by the operations to be effected. The 
blocks were firm and the pulleys strong. To this tackle- 
gear cables were attached, which from a distance looked 
hke threads ; while beneath this apparatus of tackle 
and carpentry, in the air, the massive hull of the Durande 
seemed suspended by threads. 

She was not yet suspended, however. Under the 
cross beams eight perpendicular holes had been made in 
the deck — four on the port, and four on the starboard 
side of the engine; eight other holes had been made 
beneath them through the keel. The cables, descending 
vertically from the four tackle-blocks, through the deck, 
passed out at the keel and under the machinery, re- 
entered the ship by the holes on the other side, and 
passing again upward through the deck, returned, and 
were wound round the beams. Here a sort of jigger- 
tackle held them in a bunch bound fast to a single cable, 
capable of being directed by one arm. The single cable 
passed over a hook and through a dead-eye, which 
completed the apparatus and kept it in check. This 
combination compelled the four tacklings to work to- 
gether, and acting as a complete restraint upon the sus- 
pending powers, became a sort of dynamical rudder in 
the hand of the pilot of the operation, maintaining the 
movements in equilibrium. The ingenious adjustment 
of this system of tackling had some of the simplifpng 
qualities of the Weston pulley of these times, with a 
mixture of the antique polyspaston of Vitruvius. Gilliatt 
had discovered this, although he knew nothing of the' 
dead Vitruvius or of the still unborn Weston. The 
length of the cables varied according to the unequal 
declivity of the cross beams. The ropes were dangerous, 
for the untarred hemp was liable to give way. Chains 


302 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


would have been better in this respect, but chains would 
not have passed well though the tackle-blocks. 

The apparatus was full of defects, but as the work of 
one man it was surprising. For the rest, it will be 
understood that many details are omitted which would 
render the construction perhaps intelligible to practical 
mechanics, but obscure to others. 

The top of the funnel passed between the two beams 
in the middle. 

Gilliatt, without suspecting it, had reconstructed, 
three centuries later, the mechanism of the Salbris 
carpenter — a mechanism rude and incorrect, and haz- 
ardous for him who would dare to use it. 

Here let us remark that the rudest defects do not 
prevent a mechanism from working well or ill. It may 
limp, but it moves. The obelisk in the square of 
St. Peter’s at Rome is erected in a way which offends 
against all the principles of statics. The carriage of 
the Czar Peter was so constructed that it appeared 
about to overturn at every step ; but it travelled on- 
ward for all that. What deformities are there in the 
machinery of Marly ! Everything that is heterodox in 
hydraulics. Yet it did not supply Louis XIV. the less 
with water. 

Come what might, Gilliatt had faith. He had even 
anticipated success so confidently as to fix in the bul- 
warks of the sloop, on the day when he measured its 
proportions, two pairs of corresponding iron rings on 
each side, exactly at the same distances as the four 
rings on board the Durande, to which were attached the 
four chains of the funnel. 

He had in his mind a very complete and settled plan. 
All the chances being against him, he had evidently 
determined that all the precautions at least should be 
on his side. 

He did some thin^ which seemed useless — a sign of 
attentive premeditation. 

His manner of proceeding 'Wrmld, ns we have said^ 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


303 


aave puzzled an observer, even though familiar with 
nechanical operations. 

A witness of his labour who had seen him, for example, 
with enormous efforts, and at the risk of breaking his 
neck, driving with blows of his hammer eight or ten great 
nails which he had forged into the base of the two 
Douvres at the entrance of the defile between them, 
would have had some difficulty in understanding the 
object of these nails, and would probably have wondered 
what could be the use of all that trouble. 

If he had then seen him measuring the portion of the 
fore bulwark which had remained, as we have described 
it, hanging on by the wreck, then attaching a strong cable 
to the upper edge of that portion, cutting away with 
strokes of his hatchet the dislocated fastenings which 
held it, then dragging it out of the defile, pushing the 
lower part by the aid of the receding tide, while he 
dragged the upper part ,* finally, by great labour, fasten- 
ing with the cable this heavy mass of planks and piles 
wider than the entrance of the defile itself, with the 
nails driven into the base of the Little Douvre — the 
observer would perhaps have found it still more difficult 
to comprehend, and might have wondered why Gilliatt, 
if he wanted for the purpose of his operations to dis- 
enciunber the space between the two rocks of this mass, 
had not allowed it to fall into the sea, where the tide 
wordd have carried it away. 

Gilliatt had probably his reasons. 

In fixing the nails in the basement of the rocks, he had 
taken advantage of aU the cracks in the granite, en- 
larged them where needful, and driven in first of all 
wedges of wood, in which he fixed the nails. He made a 
rough commencement of similar preparations in the two 
rocks which rose at the other extremity of the narrow 
passage on the eastern side. He furnished with plugs 
of wood all the crevices, as if he desired to keep these 
also ready to hold nails or clamps ; but this appeared to 
be a simple precaution, for he did not use them further. 


304 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


He was compelled to economize, and only to use his 
materials as he had need, and at the moment when th^ 
necessity for them came. This was another additioii 
to his numerous difficulties. 

As fast as one labour was accomplished another became 
necessary. Gilliatt passed without hesitation from task 
to task, and resolutely accomplished his giant strides. 


IV. 

SUB RE. 

The aspect of the man who accomplished all these 
labours became terrible. 

Gilliatt in his multifarious tasks expended all his 
strength at once, and regained it with difficulty. 

Privations on the one hand, lassitude on the other, 
had much reduced him. His hair and beard had grown 
long. He had but one shirt which was not in rags. He 
went about naked-footed, the wind having carried away 
one of his shoes and the sea the other. Fractures of the 
rude and dangerous stone anvil which he used had left 
small wounds upon his hands and arms, the marks of 
labour. These wounds, or rather scratches, were super- 
ficial ; but the keen air and the salt sea irritated them 
continually. 

He was generally hungry, thirsty, and cold. 

His store of fresh water was gone ; his rye-meal was 
used or eaten. He had nothing left but a little biscuit. 

This he broke with his teeth, having no water in which 
to steep it. 

By little and little, and day by day, his powers de- 
creased. 

The terrible rocks were consuming his existence. 

How to obtain food was a problem ; how to get drink 
was a problem ; how to find rest was a problem. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


305 


He ate when he was fortunate enough to find a crayfish 
or a crab ; he drank when he chanced to see a sea-bird 
descend upon a point of rock ; for on climbing up to the 
spot he generally found there a hollow with a little fresh 
water. He drank from it after the bird ; sometimes 
with the bird ; for the gulls and seamews had become 
accustomed to him, and no longer flew away at his 
approach. Even in his greatest need of food he did not 
attempt to molest them. He had, as will be remem- 
bered, a superstition about birds. The birds on their part 
— now that his hair was rough and wild and his beard 
long — ^had no fear of him. The change in his face gave 
them confidence ; he had lost resemblance to men, and 
taken the form of the wild beast. 

The birds and Gilliatt, in fact, had become good 
friends. Companions in poverty, they helped each 
other. As long as he had had any meal, he had crum- 
bled for them some Httle bits of the cakes he made. 
In his deeper distress they showed him in their turn 
the places where he might find the httle pools of 
water. 

He ate the shellfish raw. ’ Shellfish help in a certain 
degree to quench the thirst. The crabs he cooked. 
Having no kettle, he roasted them between two stones 
made red-hot in his fire, after the manner of the savages 
of the Feroe Islands. 

Meanwhile signs of the equinoctial season had begun 
to appear. There came rain — an angry rain. No 
showers or steady torrents, but fine, sharp, icy, pene- 
trating points which pierced to his skin through his 
clothing, and to his bones through his skin. It was a 
rain which yielded little water for drinking, but which 
drenched him none the less.^ 

Chary of assistance, prodigal of misery — such was the 
character of these rains. During one week Gilliatt 
suffered from them all day and all night. 

At night, in his rocky recess, nothing but the over- 
powering fatigue of his daily work enabled him to get 


3o6 the toilers OF THE SEA. 

sleep. The great sea-gnats stung him, and he awakened 
covered with blisters. 

He had a kind of low fever, which sustained him ; tfiis 
fever is a succour which destroys. By instinct he chewed 
the mosses, or sucked the leaves of wild cochlearia, 
scanty tufts of which grew in the dry crevices of the 
rocks. Of his suffering, however, he took httle heed. 
He had no time to spare from his work to the considera- 
tion of his own privations. The rescue of the machinery 
of the Durande was progressing well. That sufi&ced for 
him. 

Every now and then, for the necessities of his work, 
he jumped into the water, swam to some point, and 
gained a footing again. He simply plunged into the sea 
and left it, as a man passes from one rooih in his dwell- 
ing to another. 

His clothing was never dry. It was saturated with 
rain water, which had no time to evaporate, and with 
sea water, which never dries. He lived perpetually wet. 

Living in wet clothing is a habit which may be ac- 
quired. The poor groups of Irish people — old men, 
mothers, girls almost naked, and infants — ^who pass the 
winter in the open air, under the snow and rain, huddled 
together, sometimes at the comers of houses in the 
streets of London, live and die in this condition. 

To be soaked with wet, and yet to be thirsty ; Gilliatt 
grew familiar with this strange torture. There were 
times when he was glad to suck the sleeve of his loose 
coat. 

The fire which he made scarcely warmed him. A fire 
in open air yields little comfort. It bums on one side, 
and freezes on the other. 

Gilliatt often shivered even while sweating over his 
forge. 

Ever 5 where about him rose resistance amidst a terrible 
silence. He felt himself the enemy of an unseen com- 
bination. There is a dismal non possumus in nature. 
The inertia of matter is like a sullen threat. A mys- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


307 


terious persecution environed him. He suffered from 
heats and shiverings. The fire ate into his flesh ; the 
water froze him ; feverish thirst tormented him ; the 
wind tore his clothing ; hunger undermined the organs 
of the body. The oppression of all these things was 
constantly exhausting him. Obstacles silent, immense, 
seemed to converge from all points, with the blind 
irresponsibility of fate, yet full of a savage unanimity. 
He felt them pressing inexorably upon him. No means 
were there of escaping from them. His sufferings pro- 
duced the impression of some living persecutor. He had 
a constant sense of something working against him, of a 
hostile form ever present, ever labouring to circumvent 
and to subdue him. He could have fled from the 
struggle, but since he remained he had no choice but 
to war with this impenetrable hostility. He asked him- 
self what it was. It took hold of him, grasped him 
tightly, overpowered him, deprived him of breath. The 
invisible persecutor was destroying him by slow degrees. 
Every day the oppression became greater, as if a 
mysterious screw had received another turn. 

His situation in this dreadful spot resembled a duel, 
in which a suspicion of some treachery haunts the mind 
of one of the combatants. 

Now it seemed a coalition of obscure forces which 
surrounded him. He felt that there was somewhere 
a determination to be rid of his presence. It is thus that 
the glacier chases the loitering ice-block. 

Almost without seeming to touch him this latent coali- 
tion had reduced him to rags ; had left him bleeding, 
distressed, and as it were hors de combat, even before the 
battle. He laboured, indeed, not the less — without pause 
or rest ; but as the work advanced, the workman him- 
self lost ground. It might have been fancied that 
Nature, dreading his bold spirit, adopted the plan of 
slowly undermining his bodily power. Gilliatt kept his 
ground, and left &e rest to the future. The sea had 
begun by consuming him ; what would come next ? 


3o8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA 


The double Douvres — that dragon made of granite, 
and lying in ambush in mid-ocean — had sheltered him. 
It had allowed him to enter, and to do his will ; ^ but 
its hospitality resembled the welcome of devouring jaws. 

The desert, the boundless surface, the unfathomable 
space around him and above, so full of negatives to man’s 
will ; the mute, inexorable determination of phenomena 
following their appointed course ; the grand general 
law of things, implacable and passive ; the ebbs and 
flows ; the rocks themselves, dark Pleiades whose points 
were each a star amid vortices, a centre of an irradiation 
of currents ; the strange, indefinable conspiracy to stifle 
with indifference the temerity of a living being ; the 
wintry winds, the clouds, and the beleaguering waves 
enveloped him, closed round him slowly, and in a measure 
shut him in, and separated him from companionship, 
like a dungeon built up by degrees round a living man. 
All against him, nothing for him, he felt himself 
isolated, abandoned, enfeebled, sapped, forgotten. His 
storehouse empty, his tools broken or defective, he was 
tormented with hunger and thirst by day, with cold by 
night. His sufferings had left him with wounds and 
tatters, rags covering sores, torn hands, bleeding feet, 
wasted limbs, pallid cheeks, and eyes bright with a 
strange light ; but this was the steady flame of his 
determination. 

All his efforts seemed to tend to the impossible. His 
success was trifling and slow. He was compelled to ex- 
pend much labour for very little results. This it was 
that gave to his struggle its noble and pathetic character. 

That it should have required so many preparations, so 
much toil, so many cautious experiments, such nights 
of hardship and such days of danger, merely to set up 
four beams over a shipwrecked vessel, to divide and 
isolate the portion that could be saved, and to adjust 
to that wreck within a wreck four tackle-blocks with 
their cables was only the result of his solitary labour. 

That solitary position Gilliatt had more than accepted ; 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


309 


he had deliberately chosen it. Dreading a competitor, 
because a competitor might have proved a rival, he had 
sought for no assistance. The overwhelming enterprise, 
the risk, the danger, the toil multiplied by itself, the 
possible destruction of the salvor in his work, famine, 
fever, nakedness, distress — ^he had chosen all these for 
himself I Such was his selfishness. He was like a man 
placed in some terrible chamber which is being slowly 
exhausted of air. His vitality was leaving him by little 
and little. He scarcely perceived it. 

Exhaustion of the bodily strength does not necessarily 
exhaust the will. Faith is only a secondary power ; the 
will is the first. The mountains which faith is pro- 
verbially said to move are nothing beside that which 
the will can accomplish. All that Gilliatt lost in vigour 
he gained in tenacity. The destruction of the physical 
man under the oppressive influence of that wild sur- 
rounding sea and rock and sky seemed only to rein- 
vigorate his moral nature. 

Gilliatt felt no fatigue ; or, rather, would not yield to 
any. The refusal of the mind to recognize the failings 
of the body is in itself an immense power. 

He saw nothing, except the steps in the progress of his 
labours. 

His object — now seeming so near attainment — wrapped 
him in perpetual illusions. 

He endured all this suffering without any other 
thought than is comprised in the word Forward.” 
His work flew to his head ; the strength of the will is 
intoxicating. Its intoxication is called heroism. 

He had become a kind of Job, having the ocean for the 
scene of his sufferings. But he was a Job wrestling with 
difficulty, a Job combating and making head against 
afflictions ; a Job conquering ; a combination of Job 
and Prometheus, if such names are not too great to be 
applied to a poor sailor and fisher of crabs and crayfish. 


310 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


V. 

SUB UMBRA. 

Sometimes in the night-time Gilliatt woke and peered 
into the darkness. 

He felt a strange emotion. 

His eyes were opened upon the black night ; the 
situation was dismal, full of disquietude. 

There is such a thing as the pressure of darkness. 

A strange roof of shadow ; a deep obscurity, which no 
diyer can explore ; a light mingled with that obscurity, 
of a strange, subdued, and sombre kind ; floating atoms 
of rays, like a dust of seeds or of ashes ; millions of 
lamps, but no illumining ; a vast sprinkling of fire, of 
which no man knows the secret ; a diffusion of shining 
points, like a drift of sparks arrested in their course ; 
the disorder of the whirlwind, with the fixedness of 
death ; a mysterious and abyssmal depth ; an enigma, 
at once showing and concealing its face ; the Infinite 
in its mask of darkness — these are the S5mon}Tns of 
night. Its weight lies heavily on the soul of man. 

This union of all mysteries — the mystery of the Cosmos 
and the mystery of Fate — oppresses human reason. 

The pressure of darkness acts in inverse proportion 
upon different kinds of natures. In the presence of 
night man feels his own incompleteness. He perceives 
the dark void and is sensible of infirmity. ‘ It is like the 
vacancy of blindness. Face to face with night, man 
bends, kneels, prostrates himself, crouches on the earth, 
crawls towards a cave, or seeks for wings. Almost 
always he shrinks from that vague presence of the 
Infinite Unknown. He asks himself what it is ; he 
trembles and bows the head. Sometimes he desires to 
go to it. 

To go whither ? 

He can only answer, “ Yonder.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 311 

But what is that ? and what is there ? 

This curiosity is evidently forbidden to the spirit of 
man ; for all around him the roads which bridge that 
gulf are broken up or gone. No arch exists for him to 
span the Infinite. But there is attraction in forbidden 
knowledge, as in the edge of the abyss. Where the 
footstep cannot tread, the eye may reach ; where the 
eye can penetrate no farther, the mind may soar. There 
is no man, however feeble or insufficient his resources, 
who does not essay. According to his nature he ques- 
tions or recoils before that mystery. With some it has 
the effect of repressing ; with others it enlarges the 
soul. The spectacle is sombre, indefinite. 

Is the night calm and cloudless ? It is then a depth 
of shadow. Is it stormy ? It is then a sea of cloud. 
Its limitless deeps reveal themselves to us, and yet 
baffle our gaze ; close themselves against research, but 
open to conjecture. Its innumerable dots of light only 
make deeper the obscurity beyond. Jewels, scintilla- 
tions, stars ; existences revealed in the unknown uni- 
verses ; dread defiances to man’s approach ; landmarks 
of the infinite creation ; boundaries there, where there 
are no bounds ; sea-marks impossible, and yet real, 
numbering the fathoms of those infinite deeps. One 
microscopic glittering point ; then another ; then 
another ; imperceptible, yet enormous. Yonder light 
is a focus ; that focus is a star ; that star is a sun ; that 
sun is a universe ; that universe is nothing. For all 
numbers are as zero in the presence of the Infinite. 

These worlds, which yet are nothing, exist. Through 
this fact we feel the difference which separates the being 
nothing from the not to he. 

All these vague imaginings, increased and intensified 
by solitude, weighed upon Gilliatt. 

He understood them little, but he felt them. His was 
a powerful intellect clouded ; a great spirit wild and 
untaught. 


312 


TH£ TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


VI. 

GILLIATT PLACES THE SLOOP IN READINESS. 

This rescue of the* machinery of the wreck as meditated 
by Gilhatt was, as we have already said, hke the escape 
of a criminal from a prison — necessitating all the patience 
and industry recorded of such achievements ; industry 
carried to the point of a miracle, patience only to 'be 
compared with a long agony. A certain prisoner named 
Thomas, at the Mont Saint Michel, found means of 
secreting the greater part of a wall in his paillasse. 
Another at Tulle, in 1820, cut away a quantity of lead 
from the terrace where the prisoners walked for exer- 
cise. With what kind of knife ? No one would guess. 
And melted this lead with what fire ? None have ever 
discovered ; but it is known that he cast it in a mould 
made of the crumb of bread. With this lead and this 
mould he made a key, and with this key succeeded in 
opening a lock of which he had never seen anything but 
the keyhole. Some of this marvellous ingenuity Gilliatt 
possessed. He had once climbed and descended from 
the chff at Boisros 4 . He was the Baron Trenck of the 
wreck, and the Latude of her machinery. 

The sea, hke a jailer, kept watch over him. 

For the rest, mischievous and inclement as the rain 
had been, he had contrived to derive some benefit from 
it. He had in part replenished his stock of fresh water ; 
but his thirst was inextinguishable, and he emptied his 
can as fast as he fiUed it. 

One day — it was on the last day of April or the first 
of May — all was at length ready for his purpose. 

The engine-room was, as it were, enclosed between the 
eight cables hanging from the tackle-blocks, four on one 
side, four on the other. The sixteen holes upon the 
deck and under the keel, through which the cables 
passed, had been hooped round by sawing. The planking 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


313 


had been sawed, the timber cut with the hatchet, the 
ironwork with a file, the sheathing with the chisel. The 
part of the keel immediately under the machinery was 
cut squarewise, and ready to descend with it while still 
supporting it. All this frightful swinging mass was held 
only by one chain, which was itself only kept in position 
by a filed notch. At this stage, in such a labour and so 
near its completion, haste is prudence. 

The water was low, the moment favourable. 

Gilliatt had succeeded in removing the axle of the 
paddles, the extremities of which might have proved an 
obstacle and checked the descent. He had contrived to 
make this heavy portion fast in a vertical position within 
the engine-room itself. 

It was time to bring his work to an end. The work- 
man, as we have said, was not weary, for his will was 
strong ; but his tools were. The forge was by degrees 
becoming impracticable. The blower had begun to 
work badly. The little hydraulic fall being of sea- 
water, saline deposits had incrusted the joints of the 
apparatus, and prevented its free action. 

Gilliatt visited the creek of The Man ” rock, ex* 
amined the sloop, and assured himself that all was in 
good condition, particularly the four rings fixed to star- 
board and to larboard ; then he weighed anchor, and 
worked the heavy barge-shaped craft with the oars till 
he brought it alongside the two Douvres. The defile 
between the rocks was wide enough to admit it. There 
was also depth enough. On the day of his arrival he had 
satisfied himself that it was possible to push the sloop 
under the Durande. 

The feat, however, was difficult ; it required the 
minute precision of a watchmaker. The operation was 
all the more delicate from the fact that, for his objects, 
he was compelled to force it in by the stern, rudder first. 
It was necessary that the mast and the rigging of the 
sloop should project beyond the wreck in the direction 
of the sea. 


314 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


These embarrassments rendered all GiUiatt^s opera- 
tions awkward. It was not like entering the creek of 
“ The Man,” where it was a mere affair of the tiller. 
It was necessary here to push, drag, row, and take 
soundings all together. Gilliatt consumed but a quarter 
of an hour in these manoeuvres ; but he was successful. 

In fifteen or twenty minutes the sloop was adjusted 
under the wreck. It was almost wedged in there. By 
means of his two anchors he moored the boat by head 
and stern. The strongest of the two was placed so as to 
be efficient against the strongest wind that blows, which 
was that from the south-west. Then by the aid of a 
lever and the capstan, he lowered into the sloop the two 
cases containing the pieces of the paddle-wheel, the 
slings of which were all ready. The two cases served as 
ballast. 

Relieved of these encumbrances, ne fastened to the 
hook of the chain of the capstan the sling of the regu- 
lating tackle-gear, intending to check the pulleys. 

Owing to the peculiar objects of this labour, the 
defects of the old sloop became useful qualities. It 
had no deck ; her burden therefore would have greater 
depth, and could rest upon the hold. Her mast was 
very forward — too far forward indeed for general pur- 
poses ; her contents therefore would have more room, 
and the mast standing thus beyond the mass of the 
wreck, there would be nothing to hinder its disembarka- 
tion. It was a mere shell, or case for receiving it ; but 
nothing is more stable than this on the sea. 

While engaged in these operations, Gilliatt suddenly 
perceived that the sea was rising. He looked around 
to see from what quarter the wind was coming. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


315 


VII. 

SUDDEN DANGER. 

The breeze was scarcely perceptible; but what there 
was came from the west — a disagreeable habit of the 
winds during the equinoxes. 

The rising sea varies much in its effects upon the 
Douvres rocks, depending upon the quarter of the wind. 

According to the gale which drives them before it, 
the waves enter the rocky corridor either from the east 
or from the west. Entering from the east, the sea is 
comparatively gentle ; coming from the west, it is always 
furious. The reason of this is, that the wind from the 
east blowing from the land has not had time to gather 
force ; while the westerly winds, coming from the 
Atlantic, blow unchecked from a vast ocean. Even a 
very slight breeze, if it comes from the west, is serious. 
It rolls the huge billows from the illimitable space and 
dashes the waves against the narrow defile in greater 
bulk than can find entrance there. 

A sea which rolls into a gulf is always terrible. It is 
the same with a crowd of people : a multitude is a sort 
of fluid body. When the quantity which can enter is 
less than the quantity endeavouring to force a way, there 
is a fatal crush among the crowd, a fierce convulsion on 
the water. As long as the west wind blows, however 
slight the breeze, the Douvres are twice a day subjected 
to that rude assault. The sea rises, the tide breasts up, 
the narrow gullet gives little entrance, the waves, driven 
against it violently, rebound and roar, and a tremendous 
surf beats the two sides of the gorge. Thus the Douvres, 
during the slightest wind from the west, present the 
singular spectacle of a sea comparatively calm without, 
while within the rocks a storm is raging. This tumult 
of waters, altogether confined and circumscribed, has 
nothing of the character of a tempest. It is a mere 


'fHE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


316 

local outbreak among the waves, but a terrible one. 
As regards the winds from the north and south, they 
strike the rocks crosswise, and cause little surf in the 
passage. The entrance by the east, a fact which must 
be borne in mind, was close to “ The Man ** rock. The 
dangerous opening to the west was at the opposite 
extremity, exactly between the two Douvres. 

It was at this western entrance that Gilliatt found 
himself with the wrecked Durande, and the sloop made 
fast beneath it. 

A catastrophe seemed inevitable. There was not 
much wind, but it was sufficient for the impending mis- 
chief. 

Before many hours the swell which was rising would 
be rushing with full force into the gorge of the Douvres. 
The first waves were already brealang. This swell, and 
eddy of the entire Atlantic, would have behind it the 
immense sea. There would be no squall ; no violence, 
but a simple overwhelming wave, which, commencing 
on the coasts of America, rolls towards the shores of 
Europe with an impetus gathered over two thousand 
leagues. This wave, a gigantic ocean barrier, meeting 
the gap of the rocks, must be caught between the two 
Douvres, standing Hke watch-towers at the entrance, 
or like pillars of the defile. Thus swelled by the tide, 
augmented by resistance, driven back by the shoals, 
and urged on by the wind, it would strike the rock with 
violence, and with all the contortions from the obstacles 
it had encountered, and all the frenzy of a sea confined 
in limits, would rush between the rocky walls, where it 
would reach the sloop and the Durande, and, in all 
probability, destroy them. 

A shield against this danger was wanting. Gilliatt 
had one. 

The problem was to prevent the sea reaching it at 
one bound ; to obstruct it from striking, while allowing 
it to rise ; to bar the passage without refusing it admis- 
sion ; to prevent the compression of the water in the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


317 


gorge, which was the whole danger ; to turn an irruption 
into a simple flood ; to extract, as it were, from the 
waves all their violence, and constrain the furies to be 
gentle : it was, in fact, to substitute an obstacle which 
will appease for an obstacle which irritates. 

Gilliatt, with all that dexterity which he possessed, 
and which is so much more efficient than mere force, 
sprang upon the rocks like a chamois among the moun- 
tains or a monkey in the forest ; using for his tottering 
and dizzy strides the smallest projecting stone ; leaping 
into the water, and issuing from it again ; swimming 
among the shoals and clambering the rocks, with a rope 
between his teeth and a mallet in his hand. Thus he 
detached the cable which kept suspended and also fast 
to the basement of the Little Douvre the end of the 
forward side of the Durande ; fashioned out of some ends 
of hawsers a sort of hinges, holding this bulwark to the 
huge nails fixed in the granite ; swung this apparatus 
of planks upon them, like the gates of a great dock, 
and turned their sides, as he wonld turn a rudder, out- 
ward to the waves, which pushed the extremities upon 
the Great Douvre, while the rope hinges detained the 
other extremities upon the Little Douvre. Next he con- 
trived, by means of the huge nails placed beforehand 
for the purpose, to fix the same kind of fastenings upon 
the Great Douvre as on the little one ; made completely 
fast the vast mass of woodwork against the two pillars 
of the gorge, slung a chain across this barrier like a 
baldric upon a cuirass ; and in less than an hour this 
barricade against the sea was complete, and the gullet 
of the rocks closed as by a folding-door. 

This powerful apparatus, a heavy mass of beams and 
planks, which laid flat would have made a raft, and 
upright formed a wall, had by the aid of the water been 
handled by Gilliatt with the adroitness of a juggler. 
It might almost have been said that the obstruction 
was complete before the rising sea had the time to 
perceive it. 


3i8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


It was one of those occasions on which Jean Bart 
would have employed the famous expression which he 
applied to the sea every time he narrowly escaped ship- 
wreck, “ We have cheated the Englishman ; ” for it 
is well known that when that famous admiral meant 
to speak contemptuously of the ocean he called it “ the 
Englishman.’^ 

The entrance to the defile being thus protected, Gilliatt 
thought of the sloop. He loosened sufficient cable for 
the two anchors to allow her to rise with the tide ; an 
operation similar to what the mariners of old called 

mouiller avec des embossures” In all this Gilliatt was 
not taken the least by surprise ; the necessity had been 
foreseen. A seaman would have perceived it by the 
two pulleys of the top ropes cut in the form of snatch- 
blocks, and fixed behind the sloop, through which passed 
two ropes, the ends of which were slung through the 
rings of the anchors. 

Meanwhile the tide was rising fast ; the half flood had 
arrived — a moment when the shock of the waves, even in 
comparatively moderate weather, may become consider- 
able. Exactly what Gilliatt expected came to pass. 
The waves rolled violently against the barrier, struck it, 
broke heavily and passed beneath. Outside was the 
heavy swell ; within, the waters ran quietly. He had 
devised a sort of marine Furculce caudin‘:B. The sea 
was conquered. 


VIII. 

MOVEMENT RATHER THAN PROGRESS. 

The moment so long dreaded had come. 

The problem now was to place the machinery in the 
bark. 

Gilliatt remained thoughtful for some moments, hold- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


319 

ing the elbow of his left arm in his right hand, and 
applying his left hand to his forehead. 

Then he climbed upon the wreck, one part of which, 
containing the engine, was to be parted from it, while 
the other remained. 

He severed the four slings which fixed the four chains 
from the funnel on the larboard and the starboard sides. 
The slings being only of cord, his knife served him well 
enough for this purpose. 

The four chains set free, hung down along the sides 
of the funnel. 

From the wreck he climbed up to the apparatus which 
he had constructed, stamped with his feet upon th^ 
beams, inspected the tackle-blocks, looked to the pulleys, 
handled the cables, examined the eking-pieces, assured 
himself that the untarred hemp was not saturated 
through, found that nothing was wanting and nothing 
giving way ; then springing from the height of the 
suspending props on to the deck, he took up his position 
near the capstan, in the part of the Durande which he 
intended to leave jammed in between the two Douvres. 
This was to be his post during his labours. 

Earnest, but troubled with no impulses but what 
were useful to his work, he took a final glance at 
the hoisting-tackle, then seized a file and began to 
saw with it through the chain which held the whole 
! suspended. 

; The rasping of the file was audible amidst the roaring 
of the sea. 

The chain from the capstan, attached to the regulating 
gear, was within his reach, quite near his hand. 

Suddenly there was a crash. The link which he was 
filing snapped when only half cut through : the whole 
apparatus swung violently. He had only just time 
sufficient to seize the regulating gear. 

The severed chain beat against the rock ; the eight 
cables strained ; the huge mass, sawed and cut through, 
detached itself from the wreck ; the belly of the hull 


320 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


opened, and the iron flooring of the engine-room was 
visible below the keel. 

If he had not seized the regulating tackle at that 
instant it would have fallen. But his powerful hand 
was there, and it descended steadily. 

When the brother of Jean Bart, Peter Bart, that 
powerful and sagacious toper, that poor Dunkirk fisher- 
man, who used to talk familiarly with the Grand Admiral 
of France, went to the rescue of the galley Langeron, in 
distress in the Bay of Ambleteuse, endeavouring to save 
the heavy floating mass in the midst of the breakers 
of that furious bay, he rolled up the mainsail, tied it 
with sea-reeds, and trusted to the ties to break away 
of themselves, and give the sail to the wind at the right 
moment. Just so Gilliatt trusted to the breaking of 
the chain ; and the same eccentric feat of daring was 
crowned with the same success. 

The tackle, taken in hand by Gilliatt, held out and 
worked well. Its function, as will be remembered, was 
to moderate the powers of the apparatus, thus reduced 
from many to one, by bringing them into united action. 
The gear had some similarity to a bridle of a bowline, 
except that instead of trimming a sail it served to balance 
a complicated mechanism. 

Erect, and with his hand upon the capstan, Gilliatt, 
so to speak, was enabled to feel the pulse of the apparatus. 

It was here that his inventive genius manifested itself. 

A remarkable coincidence of forces was the result. 

While the machinery of the Durande, detached in a 
mass, was lowering to the sloop, the sloop rose slowly to 
receive it. The wreck and the salvage vessel assisting 
each other in opposite ways, saved half the labour of 
the operation. 

The tide swelling quietly between the two Douvres 
raised the sloop and brought it nearer to the Durande. 
The sea was more than conquered : it was tamed and 
broken in. It became, in fact, part and parcel of the 
organization of power. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 321 

The rising waters lifted the vessel without any sort 
of shock, gently, and almost with precaution, as one 
would handle porcelain. 

Gilliatt combined and proportioned the two labours, 
that of the water and that of the apparatus ; and stand- 
ing steadfast at the capstan, like some terrible statue 
obeyed by all the movements around it at the same 
moment, regulated the slowness of the descent by the 
^ slow rise of the sea. 

There was no jerk given by the waters, no slip among 
the tackle. It was a strange collaboration of all the 
natural forces subdued. On one side, gravitation lower- 
ing the huge bulk ; on the other, the sea raising the bark. 
The attraction of heavenly bodies which causes the tide, 
and the attractive force of the earth, which men call 
weight, seemed to conspire together to aid his plans. 
There was no hesitation, no stoppage in their service; 
under the dominance of mind these passive forces became 
active auxiliaries. From minute to minute the work 
advanced ; the interval between the wreck and the 
sloop diminished insensibly. The approach continued 
in silence, and as in a sort of terror of the man who 
stood there. The elements received his orders and ful- 
filled them. 

Nearly at the moment when the tide ceased to raise 
it the cable ceased to slide. Suddenly, but without 
commotion, the pulleys stopped. The vast machine had 
taken its place in the bark, as if placed there by a powerful 
hand. It stood straight, upright, motionless, firm. The 
iron floor of the engine-room rested with its four comers 
evenly upon the hold. 

The work was accomplished. 

Gilliatt contemplated it, lost in thought. 

He was not the spoiled child of success. He bent 
under the weight of his great joy. He felt his limbs, as 
it were, sinking ; and contemplating his triumph he, 
who had never been shaken by danger, beg^ to tremble. 

He gazed upon the sloop under the wreck emd at the 
II 


322 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


machinery in the sloop. He seemed to feel it hard to 
believe it true. It might have been supposed that he 
had never looked forward to that which he had accom- 
plished. A miracle had been wrought by his hands, and 
he contemplated it in bewilderment. 

His reverie lasted but a short time. 

Starting like one awakening from a deep sleep, he 
seized his saw, cut the eight cables, separated now from 
the sloop, thanks to the rising of the tide, by only about 
ten feet ; sprang aboard, took a bunch of cord, made 
four slings, passed them through the rings prepared 
beforehand, and fixed on both sides aboard the sloop 
the four chains of the funnel which only an hour before 
had been still fastened to their places aboard the Durande. 

The funnel being secured, he disengaged the upper 
part of the machinery. A square portion of the plank- 
ing of the Durande was adhering to it ; he struck off the 
nails and relieved the sloop of this encumbrance of 
planks and beams, which fell over on to the rocks — a 
great assistance in lightening it. 

•For the rest, the sloop, as has been foreseen, behaved 
well under the burden of the machinery. It had sunk 
in the water, but only to a good water-line. Although 
massive, the engine of the Durande was less heavy than 
the pile of stones and the cannon which he had once 
brought back from Herm in the sloop. 

All then was ended ; he had only to depart. 


IX. 

A SLIP BETWEEN CUP AND LIP. 

All was not ended. 

To reopen the gorge thus closed by the portion of the 
Durande’s bulwarks, and at once to push out with the 
sloop beyond the rocks, nothing could appear more clear 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


323 


and simple. On the ocean every minute is urgent. 
There was little wind ; scarcely a wrinkle on the open 
sea. The afternoon was beautiful, and promised a fine 
night. The sea, indeed, was calm, but the ebb had 
begun. The moment was favourable for starting. 
There would be the ebb-tide for leaving the Douvres, 
and the flood would carry him into Guernsey. It would 
be possible to be at St. Sampson’s at daybreak. 

But an unexpected obstacle presented itself. There 
was a flaw in his arrangements which had baffled all his 
foresight. 

The machinery was freed, but the chimney was not. 

The tide, by raising the sloop to the wreck suspended 
in the air, had diminished the dangers of the descent, 
and abridged the labour. But this diminution of the 
interval had left the top of the funnel entangled in the 
kind of gaping frame formed by the open hull of the 
Durande. The funnel was held fast there as between 
four walls. 

The services rendered by the sea had been accompanied 
by that unfortunate drawback. It seemed as if the 
waves, constrained to obey, had avenged themselves by 
a malicious trick. 

It is true that what the flood-tide had done the ebb 
would undo. 

The funnel, which was rather more than three fathoms 
in height, was buried more than eight feet in the wreck. 
The water-level would fall about twelve feet. Thus the 
funnel descending with the falling tide would have four 
feet of room to spare, and would clear itself easily. 

But how much time would elapse before that release 
would be completed ? Six hours. 

In six hours it would be near midnight. What means 
would there be of attempting to start at such an hour ? 
What channel could he find among all those breakers, 
so full of dangers even by day ? How was he to risk 
his vessel in the depth of black night in that inextricable 
labyrinth, that ambuscade of shoals ? 


324 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


There was no help for it. He must wait for the 
morrow. These six hours lost, entailed a loss of twelve 
hours at least. 

He could not even advance the labour by opening the 
mouth of the gorge. His breakwater was necessary 
against the next tide. 

He was compelled to rest. Folding his arms was 
almost the only thing which he had not yet done since 
his arrival on the rocks. 

This forced inaction irritated, almost vexed him with 
himself, as if it had been his fault. He thought, ‘‘ What 
would D6ruchette say of me if she saw me thus doing 
nothing ? ” 

And yet this interval for regaining his strength was 
not unnecessary. 

The sloop was now at his command; he determined 
to pass the night in it. 

He mounted once more to fetch his sheepskin upon 
the Great Douvre ; descended again, supped off a few 
limpets and chdtaignes de mer, drank, being very thirsty, 
a few draughts of water from his can, which was nearly 
empty, enveloped himself in the skin, the wool of which 
felt comforting, lay down like a watch-dog beside the 
engine, drew his red cap over his eyes and slept. 

His sleep was profound. It was such sleep as men 
enjoy who have completed a great labour. 


X. 

SEA-WARNINGS. 

In the middle of the night he awoke suddenly and with 
a jerk like the recoil of a spring. 

He opened his eyes. 

The Douvres, rising high over his head, were lighted 
up as by the white glow of burning embers. Over all 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


325 

the dark escarpment of the rock there was a light like 
the reflection of a fire. 

Where could this fire come from ? 

It was from the water. 

The aspect of the sea was extraordinary. 

The water seemed afire. As far as the eye could 
reach, among the reefs and beyond them, the sea ran 
with flame. The flame was not red ; it had nothing in 
common with the grand living fires of volcanic craters 
or of great furnaces. There was no sparkling, no glare, 
no purple edges, no noise. Long trails of a pale tint 
simulated upon the water the folds of a winding-sheet. 
A trembling glow w£ls spread over the waves. It was 
the spectre of a great nre, rather than the fire itself. 
It was in some degree like the glow of unearthly flames 
lighting the inside of a sepulchre. A burning darkness. 

The night itself, dim, vast, and wide-diffused, the 
fuel of that cold flame. It was a strange illumination 
issuing out of blindness. The shadows even formed 
part of that phantom-fire. 

The sailors of the Channel are familiar with those 
indescribable phosphorescences, full of warning for the 
navigator. They are nowhere more surprising than in 
the “ Great near Isigny. 

By this light, surrounding objects lose their reality. 
A spectral glimmer renders them, as it were, trans- 
parent. Rocks become no more than outlines. Cables 
of anchors look like iron bars heated to a white heat. 
The nets of the fishermen beneath the water seem webs 
of fire. The half of the oar above the waves is dark as 
ebony, the rest in the sea like silver. The drops from 
the blades uplifted from the water fall in starry showers 
upon the sea. Every boat leaves a furrow behind it 
like a comet’s tail. The sailors, wet and luminous, seem 
like men in flames. If you plunge a hand into the 
water, you withdraw it clothed in flame. The flame is 
dead, and is not felt. Your arm becomes a firebrand. 
You see the forms of things in the sea roll beneath the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


326 

waves as in liquid fire. The foam twinkles. The fish 
are tongues of fire, or fragments of the forked lightning, 
moving in the depths. 

The reflection of this brightness had passed over the 
closed eyelids of Gilliatt in the sloop. It was this that 
had awakened him. 

His awakening was opportune. 

The ebb tide had run out, and the waters were begin- 
ning to rise again. The funnel, which had become disen- 
gaged during his sleep, was about to enter again into 
the yawning hollow above it. 

It was rising slowly. 

A rise of another foot would have entangled it in the 
wreck again. A rise of one foot is equivalent to half 
an hour’s tide. If he intended, therefore, to take advan- 
tage of that temporary deliverance once more within his 
reach, he had just half an hour before him. 

He leaped to his feet. 

Urgent as the situation was, he stood for a few moments 
meditative, contemplating the phosphorescence of the 
waves. 

Gilliatt knew the sea in all its phases. Notwithstand- 
ing all her tricks, and often as he had suffered from her 
terrors, he had long been her companion. That mysteri- 
ous entity which we call the ocean had nothing in its 
secret thoughts which he could not divine. Observa- 
tion, meditation, and solitude, had given him a quick 
perception of coming changes, of wind, or cloud, or wave. 

Gilliatt hastened to the top ropes and paid out some 
cable ; then being no longer held fast by the anchors, 
he seized the boat-hook of the sloop, and pushed her 
towards the entrance to the gorge some fathoms from 
the Durande, and quite near to the breakwater. Here, 
as the Guernsey sailors say, it had du rang. In less 
than ten minutes the sloop was withdrawn from beneath 
the carcass of the wreck. There was no further danger 
of the funnel being caught in a trap. The tide might 
rise now. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 327 

And yet GilliatFs manner was not that of one about 
to take his departure. 

He stood considering the light upon the sea once 
more ; but his thoughts were not of starting. He was 
thinking of how to fix the sloop again, and how to fix 
it more firmly than ever, though near to the exit from 
the defile. 

Up to this time he had only used the two anchors of 
the sloop, and had not yet employed the little anchor 
of the Durande, which he had found, as will be remem- 
bered, among the breakers. This anchor had been de- 
posited by him in readiness for any emergency, in a 
comer of the sloop, with a quantity of hawsers and blocks 
of top-ropes, and his cable, all furnished beforehand with 
large knots, which prevented its dragging. He now let 
go this third anchor, taking care to fasten the cable to 
a rope, one end of which was slung through the anchor 
ring, while the other was attached to the windlass of 
the sloop. In this manner he made a kind of triangular, 
triple anchorage, much stronger than the moorings with 
two anchors. All this indicated keen anxiety and a 
redoubling of precautions. A sailor would have seen 
in this operation something similar to an anchorage in 
bad weather, when there is fear of a current which might 
carry the vessel under the wind. 

The phosphorescence which he had been observing, 
and upon which his eye was now fixed once more, was 
threatening, but serviceable at the same time. But for 
it he would have been held fast locked in sleep, and de- 
ceived by the night. The strange appearance upon^ the 
sea had awakened him, and made things about him visible. 

The light which it shed among the rocks was, indeed, 
ominous ; but disquieting as it appeared to be to Gilliatt, 
it had served to show him the dangers of his position, 
and had rendered possible his operations in extricating 
the sloop. Henceforth, whenever he should be able to 
set sail, the vessel, with its freight of machinery, would 
be free. 


3^8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


And yet the idea of departing was further than ever 
from his mind. The sloop being fixed in its new posi- 
tion, he went in quest of the strongest chain which he 
had in his store-cavern, and attaching it to the nails 
driven into the two Douvres, he fortified from within 
with this chain the rampart of planks and beams, already 
protected from without by the cross chain. Far from 
opening the entrance to the defile, he made the barrier 
more complete. 

The phosphorescence lighted him still, but it was 
diminishing. The day, however, was beginning to break. 

Suddenly he paused to listen. 


XI. 


MURMURS IN THE AIR. 

A FEEBLE, indistinct sound seemed to reach his ear from 
somewhere in the far distance. 

At certain hours the great deeps give forth a murmur- 
ing noise. 

He listened a second time. The distant noise recom- 
menced. Gilliatt shook his head hke one who recognizes 
at last something famihar to him. 

A few minutes later he was at the other extremity of 
the alley between the rocks, at the entrance facing the 
east, which had remained open until then, and by heavy 
blows of his hammer was driving large nails into the 
sides of the gullet near “ The Man ” rock, as he had 
done at the gullet of the Douvres. 

The crevices of these rocks were prepared and well 
furnished with timber, almost all of which was heart 
of oak. The rock on this side being much broken up, 
there were abundant cracks, and he was able to fix even 
more nails there than in the base of the two Douvres. 

Suddenly, and as if some great breath had passed 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEa. 


329 


over it, the luminous appearance on the waters vanished. 
The twilight becoming paler every moment, assumed its 
functions. 

The nails being driven, Gilliatt dragged beams and 
cords and then chains to the spot ; and without taking 
his eyes off his work, or permitting his mind to be 
diverted for a moment, he began to construct across the 
gorge of '' The Man,’* with beams fixed horizontally 
and made fast by cables, one of those open barriers which 
science has now adopted under the name of breakwaters. 

Those who have witnessed, for example, at La Roc- 
quaine in Guernsey, or at Bourg-d’Eau in France, the 
effect produced by a few posts fixed in the rock, will 
understand the power of these simple preparations. 
This sort of breakwater is a combination of what is 
called in France epi with what is known in England as 
** a dam.” The breakwater is the chevaux-de-frise of 
fortifications against tempests. Man can only struggle 
against the sea by taking advantage of this principle of 
dividing its forces. 

Meanwhile the sun had risen and was shining brightly. 
The sky was clear, the sea calm. 

Gilliatt pressed on his work. He, too, was calm ; but 
there was anxiety in his haste. He passed with long 
strides from rock to rock, and returned dragging wildly 
sometimes a, rider, sometimes a binding strake. The 
utility of all this preparation of timbers now became 
manifest. It was evident that he was about to confront 
a danger which he had foreseen. 

A strong iron bar served him as a lever for moving 
the beams. 

The work was executed so fast that it was rather a 
rapid growth than a construction. He who has never 
seen a military pontooner at his work can scarcely form 
an idea of this rapidity. 

The eastern gullet was still narrower than the western. 
There were but five or six feet of interval between the 
rocks. The smallness of this opening was an assistance. 


330 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The space to be fortified and closed up being very little, 
the apparatus would be stronger, and might be more 
simple. Horizontal beams, therefore, sufficed, the up- 
right ones being useless. 

The first cross pieces of the breakwater being fixed, 
Gilliatt mounted upon them and listened once more. 

The murmurs had become significant. 

He continued his construction. He supported it with 
the two catheads of the Durande, bound to the frame 
of beams by cords passed through the three pulley- 
sheaves. He made the whole fast by chains. 

The construction was little more than a colossal 
hurdle, having beams for rods and chains in the place 
of wattles. 

It seemed woven together, quite as much as built. 

He multiplied the fastenings, and added nails where 
they were necessary. 

Having obtained a great quantity of bar iron from 
the wreck, he had been able to make a large number of 
these heavy nails. 

While still at work, he broke some biscuit with his 
teeth. He was thirsty, but he could not drink, having 
no more fresh water. He had emptied the can at his 
meal of the evening before. 

He added afterwards four or five more pieces of timber ; 
then climbed again upon the barrier and listened. 

The noises from the horizon had ceased ; all was still. 

The sea was smooth and quiet ; deserving all those 
complimentary phrases which worthy citizens bestow 
upon it when satisfied with a trip — “ a mirror,’* “ a 
pond,” ” like oil,” and so forth. The deep blue of the 
sky responded to the deep green tint of the ocean. The 
sapphire and the emerald hues vied with each other. 
Each were perfect. Not a cloud on high, not a line of 
foam below. In the midst of all this splendour, the April 
sun rose magnificently. It was impossible to imagine a 
lovelier day. 

On the verge of the horizon a flight of birds of passage 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


331 

formed a long dark line against the sky. They were 
flying fast, as if alarmed. 

Gilliatt set to work again to raise the breakwater. 

He raised it as high as he could ; as high, indeed, as 
the curving of the rocks would permit. 

Towards noon the sun appeared to him to give more 
than its usual warmth. Noon is the critical time of the 
day. Standing upon the powerful frame which he had 
built up, he paused again to survey the wide expanse. 

The sea was more than tranquil. It was a dull dead 
calm. No sail was visible. The sky was ever3rwhere 
clear ; but from blue it had become white. The white- 
ness was singular. To the west, and upon the horizon, 
was a little spot of a sickly bue. The spot remained in 
the same place, but by degrees grew larger. Near the 
breakers the waves shuddered, but very gently. 

Gilliatt had done well to build his breakwater. 

A tempest was approaching. 

The elements had determined to give battle. 


BOOK III.— THE STRUGGLE. 


L 


EXTREMES MEET. 

Nothing is more threatening than a late equinox. 

The appearance of the sea presents a strange phe- 
nomenon, resulting from what may be called the arrival 
of the ocean winds. 

In all seasons, but particularly at the epoch of the 
Syzygies, at the moment when least expected, the sea 
sometimes becomes singularly tranquil. That vast per- 
petual movement ceases ; a sort of drowsiness and lan- 
guor overspreads it ; and it seems weary and about to 
rest. Every rag of bunting, from the tiny streamer of 
the fishing-boat to the great flag of ships of war, droops 
against the mast. The admiri’s flag, the Royal and 
Imperial ensigns sleep alike. 

Suddenly all these streamers begin to flutter gently. 

If there happen to be clouds, the moment has then 
come for marking the formation of the cirri ; if the sun 
is setting, for observing the red tints of the horizon ; or 
if it be night and there is a moon, for looking attentively 
for the hdo. 

It is then that the captain or commander of a squadron, 
if he happen to possess one of those storm indicators, 
the inventor of which is unknown, notes his instnimrnt 
carefully, and takes his precautions against the soutli 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


333 


wind, ii the clouds have an appearance like dissolved 
sugar ; or against the north, if they exfoliate in crystalli- 
zations like brakes of brambles, or like fir woods. Then, 
too, the poor Irish or Breton fisherman, after having 
consulted some mysterious gnomon engraved by the 
Romans or by demons upon one of those straight enig- 
matical stones, which are called in Brittany Menhir, and 
in Ireland Cruach, hauls his boat up on the shore. 

Meanwhile the serenity of sky and ocean continues. 
The day dawns radiant, and Aurora smiles. It was this 
which filled the old poets and seers with religious horror ; 
for men dared to suspect the falsity of the sun. Solent 
quis dicer e falsum audeat ? 

The sombre vision of nature’s secret laws is interdicted 
to man by the fatal opacity of surrounding things. The 
most terrible and perfidious of her aspects is that which 
masks the convulsions of the deep. 

Some hours, and even days sometimes, pass thus. 
Pilots raise their telescopes here and there. The faces 
of old seamen have always an expression of severity left 
upon them by the vexation of perpetually looking out 
for changes. 

Suddenly a great confused murmur is heard. A sort 
of mysterious dialogue takes place in the air. 

Nothing unusual is seen. 

The wide expanse is tranquil. 

Yet the noises increase. The dialogue becomes more 
audible. 

There is something beyond the horizon. 

Something terrible. It is the wind. 

The wind ; or rather that populace of Titans which 
we call the gale. The unseen multitude. 

India knew them as the Maroubs, Judea as the Kerou- 
bim, Greece as the Aquilones. They are the invisible 
winged creatures of the Infinite. Their blasts sweep 
over the earth. 


334 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


II 

THE OCEAN WINDS. 

They come from the immeasurable deep. Their wide 
wings need the breadth of the ocean gulf ; the spacious- 
ness of desert solitudes. The Atlantic, the Pacific — 
those vast blue plains — are their delight. They hasten 
thither in flocks. Commander Page witnessed, far out 
at sea, seven waterspouts at once. They wander there, 
wild and terrible 1 The ever-ending yet eternal flux 
and reflux is their work. The extent of their power, 
the limits of their will, none know. They are the Sphinxes 
of the abyss : Gama was their (Edipus. In that dark, 
ever-moving expanse, they appear with faces of cloud. 
He who perceives their pale lineaments in that wide 
dispersion, the horizon of the sea, feels himself in pres- 
ence of an unsubduable power. It might be imagined 
that the proximity of human intelligence disquieted 
them, and that they revolted against it. The mind of 
man is invincible, but the elements baffle him. He can 
do nothing against the power which is everywhere, and 
which none can bind. The gentle breath becomes a 
gale, smites with the force of a war-club, and then 
becomes gentle again. The winds attack with a terrible 
crash, and defend themselves by fading into nothingness. 
He who would encounter them must use artifice. Their 
varying tactics, their swift redoubled blows, confuse. 
They fly as often as they attack. They are tenacious 
and impalpable. Who can circumvent them ? The 
prow of the Argo, cut from an oak of Dodona’s grove, 
that mysterious pilot of the bark, spoke to them, and 
they insulted that pilot-goddess. Columbus, beholding 
their approach at La Pinta, mounted upon the poop, 
and addressed them with the first verses of St. John's 
Gospel. Surcouf defied them : Here come the gang/* 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 335 

he used to say. Napier greeted them with cannon-balls. 
They assume the dictatorship of chaos. 

Chaos is theirs, in which to wreak their mysterious 
vengeance : the den of the winds is more monstrous 
than that of lions. How many corpses he in its deep 
recesses, where the howling gusts sweep without pity 
over that obscure and ghastly mass ! The winds are 
heard wheresoever they go, but they' give ear to none. 
Their acts resemble crimes. None know on whom they 
cast their hoary surf ; with what ferocity they hover 
over shipwrecks, looking at times as if they flung their 
impious foam-flakes in the face of heaven. They are 
the tyrants of unknown regions. Luoghi spaventosi'* 
murmured the Venetian mariners. 

The trembling fields of space are subjected to their 
fierce assaults. Things unspeakable come to pass in 
those deserted regions. Some horseman rides in the 
gloom ; the air is full of a forest sound ; nothing is 
visible ; but the tramp of cavalcades is heard. The 
noonday is overcast with sudden night ; a tornado 
passes. Or it is midnight, which suddenly becomes 
bright as day ; the polar lights are in the heavens. 
Whirlwinds pass in opposite ways, and in a sort of hideous 
dance, a stamping of the storms upon the waters. A 
cloud overburdened opens and falls to earth. Other 
clouds, filled with red light, flash and roar ; then frown 
again ominously. Emptied of their lightnings, they are 
but as spent brands. Pent-up rains dissolve in mists. 
Yonder sea appears a fiery furnace in which the rains 
are falling : flames seem to issue from the waves. The 
white gleam of the ocean under the shower is reflected 
to marvellous distances. The different masses trans- 
form themselves into uncouth shapes. Monstrous whirl- 
pools make strange hollows in the sky The vapours 
revolve, the waves spin, the giddy Naiads roll ; sea and 
sky are livid ; noises as of cries of despair are in the air. 

Great sheaves of shadow and darkness are gathered 
up, trembling in the far depths of the sky. Now and 


336 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


then there is a convulsion. The rumour becomes tumult 
as the wave becomes surge. The horizon, a confused 
mass of strata, oscillating ceaselessly, murmurs in a 
continual undertone. Strange and sudden outbursts 
break through the monotony. Cold airs rush forth, suc- 
ceeded by warm blasts. The trepidation of the sea 
betokens anxious expectation, agony, terror profound. 
Suddenly the hurricane comes down, like a wild beast, to 
drink of the ocean : a monstrous draught ! The sea 
rises to the invisible mouth ; a mound of water is formed ; 
the swell increases, and the waterspout appears : the 
Prester of the ancients, stalactite above, stalagmite 
below, a whirling double-inverted cone, a point in equi- 
librium upon another, the embrace of two mountains — 
a mountain of foam ascending, a mountain of vapour 
descending — terrible coition of the cloud and the wave. 
Like the column in Holy Writ, the waterspout is dark 
by day and luminous by night. In its presence the 
thunder itself is silent and seems cowed. 

The vast commotion of those sohtudes has its gamut, 
a terrible crescendo. There are the gust, the squall, 
the storm, the gale, the tempest, the whirlwind, the 
waterspout — the seven chords of the lyre of the winds, 
the seven notes of the firmament. The heavens are a 
clear space, the sea a vast round ; but a breath passes, 
they have vanished, and all is fury and wild confusion. 

Such are these inhospitable realms. 

The winds rush, fly, swoop down, dwindle away, com- 
mence again ; hover above, whistle, roar, and smile ; 
they are frenzied, wanton, unbridled, or sinking at ease 
upon the raging waves. Their bowlings have a harmony 
of their own. They make all the heavens sonorous. 
They blow in the cloud as in a trumpet ; they sing 
through the infinite space with the mingled tones of 
clarions, horns, bugles, and trumpets — a sort of Prome- 
thean fanfare. 

Such was the music of ancient Pan. Their harmonies 
are terrible. They have a colossal joy in the darkness. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


337 


They drive and disperse great ships. Night and day, 
in ail seasons, from the tropics to the pole, there is no 
truce ; sounding their fatal trumpet through the tangled 
thickets of the clouds and waves, they pursue the grim 
chase of vessels in distress. They have their packs of 
bloodhounds, and take their pleasure, setting them to 
bark among the rocks and billows. They huddle the 
clouds together, and drive them diverse. They mould 
and knead the supple waters as with a million hands. 

The water is supple because it is incompressible. It 
slips away without effort. Borne down on one side, it 
escapes on the other. It is thus that waters become 
waves, and that the billows are a token of their Hberty. 


III. 

THE NOISES EXPLAINED. 

The grand descent of winds upon the world takes place 
at the equinoxes. At this period the balance of tropic 
and pole librates, and the vast atmospheric tides pour 
their flood upon one hemisphere and their ebb upon 
another. The signs of Libra and Aquarius have refer- 
ence to these phenomena. 

It is the time of tempests. 

The sea awaits their coming, keeping silence. 

Sometimes the sky looks sickly. Its face is wan. A 
thick dark veil obscures it. The mariners observe with 
uneasiness the angry aspect of the clouds. 

But it is its air of calm contentment which they dread 
the most. A smiling sky in the equinoxes is the tempest 
in gay disguise. It was under skies hke these that “ The 
Tower of Weeping Women ” in Amsterdam was filled 
with wives and mothers scanning the far horizon. 

When the vernal or autumnal storms delay to break, 
they are gathering strength ; hoarding up their fury for 


33S 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


more sure destruction. Beware of the gale that has 
been long delayed. It was Angot who said that “ the 
sea pays well old debts.’' 

When the delay is unusually long, the sea betokens 
her impatience only by a deeper calm, but the magnetic 
intensity manifests itself by what might be called a fiery 
humour in the sea. Fire issues from the waves ; electric 
air, phosphoric water. The sailors feel a strange lassitude. 
This time is particularly perilous for iron vessels ; their 
hulls are then hable to produce variations of the compass, 
leading them to destruction. The transatlantic steam- 
vessel Iowa perished from this cause. 

To those who are familiar with the sea, its aspect at 
these moments is singular. It may be imagined to be 
both desiring and fearing the approach of the cyclone. 
Certain unions, though strongly urged by nature, are 
attended by this strange conjunction of terror and 
desire. The lioness in her tenderest moods flies from the 
lion. Thus the sea, in the fire of her passion, trembles 
at the near approach of her union with the tempest. 
The nuptials are prepared. Like the marriages of the 
ancient emperors, they are celebrated with immolations. 
The fHe is heralded with disasters. 

Meanwhile, from yonder deeps, from the great open sea, 
from the unapproachable latitudes, from the lurid horizon 
of the watery waste, from the utmost bounds of the free 
ocean, the winds pour down. 

Listen ; for this is the famous equinox. 

The storm prepares mischief. In the old mythology 
these entities were recognized, indistinctly moving, in 
the grand scene of nature. Eolus plotted with Boreas. 
The alHance of element with element is necessary ; they 
divide their task. One has to give impetus to the wave, 
the cloud, the stream : night is an auxiliary', and must 
• be employed. There are compasses to be falsified, 
beacons to be extinguished, lanterns of lighthouses to 
be masked, stars to be hidden. The sea must lend her 
aid. Every storm is preceded by a murmur. Behind 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


339 

the horizon line there is a premonitory whispering among 
the hurricanes. 

This is the noise which is heard afar off in the dark- 
ness amidst the terrible silence of the sea. 

It was this significant whispering which Gilliatt had 
noted. The phosphorescence on the water had been the 
first warning ; this murmur the second. 

If the demon Legion exists, he is assuredly no other 
than the wind. 

The wind is complex, but the air is one. 

Hence it follows that all storms are mixed — a prin- 
ciple which results from the unity of the air. 

The entire abyss of heaven takes part in a tempest ; 
the entire ocean also. The totality of its forces is mar- 
shalled for the strife. A wave is the ocean gulf ; a gust 
is a gulf of the atmosphere. A contest with a storm is a 
contest with all the powers of sea and sky. 

It was Messier, that great authority among naval men, 
the pensive astronomer of the little lodge at Cluny, who 
said, “ The wind comes from everywhere and is every- 
where. He had no faith in the idea of winds imprisoned 
even in inland seas. With him there were no Mediter- 
ranean winds ; he declared that he recognized them as 
they wandered about the earth. He affirmed that on a 
certain day, at a certain hour, the Fohn of the Lake of 
Constance, the ancient Favonius of Lucretius, had 
traversed the horizon of Paris ; on another day, the 
Bora of the Adriatic ; on another day, the whirling 
Notus, which is supposed to be confined in the round of 
the Cyclades. He indicated their currents. He did not 
believe it impossible that the “ Autan,” which circulates 
between Corsica and the Balearic Isles, could escape 
from its bounds. He did not admit the theory of winds 
imprisoned like bears in their dens. It was he, too, who 
said that ‘‘ every rain comes from the tropics, and every 
flash of lightning from the pole.” The wind, in fact, 
becomes saturated with electricity at the intersection 
of the colures which marks the extremity of the axis, and 


340 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


with water at the equator ; bringing moisture from the 
equatorial line and the electric fluid from the poles. 

The wind is ubiquitous. 

It is certainly not meant by this that the winds never 
move in zones. Nothing is better established than the 
existence of those continuous air currents ; and aerial 
navigation by means of the wind boats, to which the 
passion for Greek terminology has given the name of 
'' aeroscaphes,” may one day succeed in utilizing the 
chief of these streams of wind. The regular course of 
air streams is an incontestable fact. There are both 
rivers of wind and rivulets of wind, although their 
branches are exactly the reverse of water currents; for 
in the air it is the rivulets which flow out of the rivers, 
and the smaller rivers which flow out of the great streams 
instead of falling into them. Hence instead of concen- 
tration we have dispersion. 

The united action of the winds and the unity of the 
atmosphere result from this dispersion. The isplace- 
ment of one molecule produces the displacement of 
another. The vast body of air becomes subject to one 
agitation. To these profound causes of coalition we 
must add the irregular surface of the earth, whose moirn- 
tains furrow the atmosphere, contorting and diverting 
the winds from their course, and determining the direc- 
tions of counter currents in infinite radiations. 

The phenomenon of the wind is the oscillation of two 
oceans one against the other ; the ocean of air, super- 
imposed upon the ocean of water, rests upon these cur- 
rents, and is convulsed with this vast agitation. 

The indivisible cannot produce separate action. No 
partition divides wave from wave. The islands of the 
Channel feel the influence of the Cape of Good Hope. 
Navigation ever3rwhere contends with the same mon- 
ster ; the sea is one hydra. The waves cover it as with 
a coat of scales. The ocean is Ceto. 

Upon that unity^ reposes an infinite variety. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


341 


IV. 

TURBA TURMA. 

According to the compass there are thirty-two winds — 
that is to say, thirty-two points. But these directions 
may be subdivided indefinitely. Classed by its direc- 
tions, the wind is incalculable ; classed by its kinds, it 
is infinite. Homer himself would have shrunk from the 
task of enumerating them. 

The polar current encounters the tropical current. 
Heat and cold are thus combined ; the equilibrium is 
disturbed by a shock, the wave of wind issues forth and 
is distended, scattered and broken up in every direction 
in fierce streams. The dispersion of the gusts shakes 
the streaming locks of the wind upon the four corners of 
the horizon. 

All the winds which blow are there. The wind of the 
Gulf Stream, which disgorges the great fogs of New- 
foundland ; the wind of Peru, in the region of silent 
heavens, where no man ever heard the thunder roar ; 
the wind of Nova Scotia, where flies the great auk (Alca 
impennis) with his furrowed beak ; the iron whirlwinds 
of the Chinese seas ; the wind of Mozambique, which 
destroys the canoes and junks ; the electric wind, which 
the people of J apan denoimce by the beating of a gong ; 
the African wind, which blow> between Table Mountain 
and the Devil's Peak, where it gains its liberty ; the 
currents of the equator, which pass over the trade winds, 
describing a parabola, the summit of which is always 
to the west ; the Plutonian wind, which issues from 
craters, the terrible breath of flames ; the singular wind 
peculiar to the volcano Awa, which occasions a per- 
petual olive tint in the north ; the Java monsoon, against 
which the people construct those casemates known as 
hurricane houses ; the branching north winds called by 
the English “ Bush winds ; " the curved squalls of the 


342 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Straits of Malacca, observed by Horsburgh ; the power- 
ful south-west wind, called Pampero in Chili, and Rebojo 
at Buenos Ayres, which carries the great condor out to 
sea, and saves him from the pit where the Indian, con- 
cealed under a bullock-hide newly stripped, watches for 
him, lying on his back and bending his great bow with 
his feet ; the chemical wind, which, according to Lemery, 
produces thunderbolts from the clouds ; the Harmattan 
of the Caffres ; the Polar snow-driver, which harnesses 
itself to the everlasting icebergs ; the wind of the Gulf of 
Bengal, which sweeps over a continent to pillage the 
triangular town of wooden booths at Nijni -Novgorod, 
in which is held the great fair of Asia ; the wind of the 
Cordilleras, agitator of great waves and forests ; the 
wind of the Australian Archipelago, where the bee- 
hunters take the wild hives hidden under the forks of 
the branches of the giant eucalyptus ; the Sirocco, the 
Mistral, the Hurricane, the dry winds, the inundating 
and diluvian winds, the torrid winds, which scatter dust 
from the plains of Brazil upon the streets of Genoa, which 
both obey and revolt against the diurnal rotation, and of 
which Herrara said, Malo viento torna contra el sol ;** 
those winds which hunt in couples, conspiring mischief, 
the one undoing the work of the other ; and those old 
winds which assailed Columbus on the coast of Veragua, 
and which during forty days, from the 2ist of October 
to the 28th of November 1520, delayed and nearly 
frustrated Magellan’s approach to the Pacific ; and those 
which dismasted the Armada and confounded Philip II. 
Others, too, there are of the names of which there is no 
end. The winds, for instance, which carry showers of 
frogs and locusts, and drive before them clouds of living 
things across the ocean ; those which blow in what are 
called Wind-leaps,” and whose function is to destroy 
ships at sea ; those which at a single blast throw the 
cargo out of trim, and compel the vessel to continue her 
course half broadside over ; the winds which construct 
the circum-cumuli ; the winds which mass together the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


343 


circum-strati ; the dark heavy winds swelled with rains ; 
' the winds of the hailstorms ; the fever winds, whose 
approach sets the salt springs and sulphur springs of 
Calabria boiling ; those which give a glittering appear- 
ance to the fur of African panthers, prowling among 
the bushes of Cape Ferro ; those which come shaking 
froin the cloud, like the tongue of a trigonocephal, the 
, terrible forked lightning ; and those which bring whirl- 
winds of black snow. Such is the legion of winds. 

The Douvres rock heard their distant tramp at the 
moment when Gilliatt was constructing his breakwater. 

As we have said, the wind means the combination of 
all the winds of the earCi, 


V. 

gilliatt’s alternatives. 

The mysterious forces had chosen their time well. 

Chance, if chance exists, is sometimes far-seeing. 

While the sloop had been anchored in the little creek 
of “ The Man ” rock, and as long as the machinery had 
been prisoned in the wreck, Gilliatt’s position had been 
impregnable. The sloop was in safety, the machinery 
sheltered. The Douvres, which held the huU of the 
Durande fast, condemned it to slow destruction, but 
protected it against unexpected accidents. In any event, 
one resource had remained to him. If the engine had 
been destroyed, Gilliatt would have been uninjured. 
He had still the sloop by which to escape. 

But to wait till the sloop was removed from the 
anchorage where she was inaccessible ; to allow it to be 
fixed in the defile of the Douvres ; to watch until the 
sloop too was, as it were, entangled in the rocks ; to 
permit him to complete the salvage, the moving, and 
the final embarkation of the machinery; to do no 


344 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


damage to that wonderful construction by which one 
man was enabled to put the whole aboard his bark ; 
to acquiesce, in fact, in the success of his exploits so far — 
this was but a trap which the elements had laid for him. 
Now for the first time he began to perceive in all its 
sinister characteristics the trick which the sea had been 
meditating so long. 

The machinery, the sloop, and their master were all 
now within the gorge of the rocks. They formed but a 
single point. One blow, and the sloop might be dashed 
to pieces on the rock, the machinery destroyed, and 
Gilliatt drowned. 

The situation could not have been more critical. 

The sphinx, which men have imagined concealing her- 
self in the cloud, seemed to mock him with a dilemma. 

“ Go or stay.” 

To go would have been madness; to remain was 
terrible. 


VL 

THE COMBAT. 

Gilliatt ascended to the summit of the Great Douvre. 

From hence he could see around the horizon. 

The western side was appalling. A wall of cloud 
spread across it, barring the wide expanse from side 
to side, and ascending slowly from the horizon towards 
the zenith. This wall, straight lined, vertical, without 
a crevice in its height, without a rent in its structure, 
seemed built by the square and measured by the plumb- 
line. It was cloud in the likeness of granite. Its 
escarpment, completely perpendicular at the southern 
extremity, cu^ed a little towards the north, like a 
bent sheet of iron, presenting the steep slippery face of 
an inclined plane. The dark wall enlarged and grew ; 
but its entablature never ceased for a moment to be 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


345 


parallel with the horizon line, which was almost indis- 
tinguishable in the gathering darkness. Silently, and 
altogether, the airy battlements ascended. No undula- 
tion, no wrinkle, no projection changed its shape or 
moved its place. The aspect of this immobihty in 
movement was impressive. The sun, pale in the midst 
of a strange sickly transparence, Hghted up this outhne 
of the Apocal5rpse. Already the cloudy bank had 
blotted out one-half the space of the sky — shelving like 
the fearful talus of the abyss. It was the uprising of a 
dark mountain between earth and heaven. 

It was night falUng suddenly upon midday. 

There was a heat in the air as from an oven door, 
coming from that mysterious mass on mass. The sky, 
which from blue had become white, was now turning 
from white to a slaty gray. The sea beneath was 
leaden-hued and dull. There was no breath, no wave, 
no noise. Far as eye could reach, the desert ocean. 
No sail was visible on any side. The birds had dis- 
appeared. Some monstrous treason seemed abroad. 

The wall of cloud grew visibly larger. 

This moving mountain of vapours, which was ap- 
proaching the Douvres, was one of those clouds which 
might be called the clouds of battle. Sinister appear- 
ances ; some strange, furtive glance seemed cast upon 
the beholder through that obscure mass uppiled. 

The approach was terrible. 

Gilliatt observed it closely, and muttered to himself, 
“ I am thirsty enough, but you will give me plenty to 
drink.*' 

He stood there motionless a few moments, his eye fixed 
upon the cloud bank, as if mentally taking a sounding 
01 the tempest. 

His galirienne was in the pocket of his jacket ; he 
took it out and placed it on hiis head. Then he fetched 
from the cave, which had so long served him for a 
sleeping-place, a few things which he had kept there in 
reserve ; he put on his overalls, and attired himself in 


346 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


his waterproof overcoat, like a knight who puts on his 
armour at the moment of battle. He had no shoes ; but 
his naked feet had become hardened to the rocks. 

This preparation for the storm being completed, he 
looked down upon his breakwater, grasped the knotted 
cord hurriedly, descended from the plateau of the Douvre, 
stepped on to the rocks below, and hastened to his store 
cavern. A few moments later he was at work. The 
vast silent cloud might have heard the strokes of his 
hammer. With the nails, ropes, and beams which still 
remained he constructed for the eastern gullet a second 
frame, which he succeeded in fixing at ten or twelve feet 
from the other. 

The silence was still profound. The blades of grass 
between the cracks of the rocks were not stirred. 

The sun disappeared suddenly. Gilliatt looked up. 

The rising cloud had just reached it. It was like the 
blotting out of day, succeeded by a mingled pale re- 
flection. 

The immense wall of cloud had changed its appear- 
ance. It no longer retained its unity. It had curved on 
reaching the zenith, whence it spread horizontally over 
the rest of the heavens. It had now its various stages. 
The tempest formation was visible, hke the strata in the 
side of a trench. It was possible to distinguish the 
layers of the rain from the beds of hail. There was no 
lightning, but a horrible, diffused glare ; for the idea 
of horror may be attached to fight. The vague breath- 
ing of the storm was audible ; the silence was broken by 
an obscure palpitation. Gilliatt, silent also, watched 
the giant blocks of vapour grouping themselves overhead 
forming the shapeless mass of clouds. Upon the horizon 
brooded and lengthened out a band of mist of ashen hue ; 
in the zenith, another band of lead colour. Pale, ragged 
fragments of cloud hung from the great mass above upon 
the mist below. The pile of cloud which formed the 
background was wan, dull, gloomy. A thin, whitish 
transverse cloud, coming no one could tell whither, cut 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


347 


the high dark wedl obliquely from north to south. One 
of the extremities of this cloud trailed along the surface 
of the sea. At the point where it touched the waters a 
dense red vapour was visible in the midst of the dark- 
ness. Below it, smaller clouds, quite black and very 
low, were flying as if bewildered or moved by opposite 
currents of air. The immense cloud beyond increased 
from all points at once, darkened the echpse, and con- 
tinued to spread its sombre pall. In the east, behind 
Gilliatt, there was only one clear porch in the heavens, 
which was rapidly being closed. Without any feeling of 
wind abroad, a strange flight of gray downy particles 
seemed to pass ; they were fine and scattered as if some 
gigantic bird had been plucked of its plumage behind 
the bank of cloud. A dark compact roof had gradu- 
ally formed itself, which on the verge of the horizon 
touched the sea, and mingled in darkness with it. The 
beholder had a vague sense of something advancing 
steadily towards him. It was vast, heavy, ominous. 
Suddenly an immense peal of thunder burst upon the air. 

Gilliatt himself felt the shock. The rude reality in 
the midst of that visionary region has something in it 
terrific. The listener might fancy that he hears some- 
thing falling in the chamber of giants. No electric flash 
accompanied the report. It was a blind peal. The 
silence was profound again. There was an interval, as 
when combatants take up their position. Then ap- 
peared slowly, one after the other, great shapeless flashes ,* 
these flashes were silent. The wall of cloud was now a 
vast cavern, with roofs and arches. Outlines of forms 
were traceable among them ; monstrous heads were 
vaguely shadowed forth ; rocks seemed to stretch out : 
elephants bearing turrets, seen for a moment, vanished. 
A column of vapour, straight, round, and dark, and sur- 
mounted by a white mist, simulated the form of a colossal 
steam-vessel engulfed, hissing, and smoking beneath the 
waves. Sheets of cloud undulated like folds of giant 
flags. In the centre, under a thick purple pall, a nucleus 


348 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


of dense fog sunk motionless, inert, impenetrable by the 
electric fires— a sort of hideous foetus in the bosom of the 
tempest. 

Suddenly Gilliatt felt a breath moving his hair. Two 
or three large spots of rain fell heavily around him on 
the rock. Then there was a second thunder-clap. The 
wind was rising. 

The terror of darkness was at its highest point. The 
first peal of thunder had shaken the sea ; the second rent 
the wall of cloud from top to base ; a breach was visible ; 
the pent-up deluge rushed towards it ; the rent became 
like a gulf filled with rain. The outpouring of the tempest 
had begun. 

The moment was terrible. 

Rain, wind, lightnings, thunder, waves swirling up- 
wards to the clouds, foam, hoarse noises, whistlings, 
mingled together hke monsters suddenly unloosened. 

For a solitary man, imprisoned with an overloaded 
vessel, between two dangerous rocks in mid-ocean, no 
crisis could have been more menacing. The danger of 
the tide, over which he had triumphed, was nothing 
compared with the danger of the tempest. 

Surrounded on all sides by dangers, Gilliatt, at the 
last moment, and before the crowning peril, had de- 
veloped an ingenious strategy. He had secured his basis 
of operations in the enemies* territory ; had pressed the 
rock into his service. The Douvres, originally his enemy, 
had become his second in that immense duel. Out of 
that sepulchre he had constructed a fortress. He was 
built up among those formidable sea ruins. He was 
blockaded, but well defended. He had, so to speak, 
set his back against the wall, and stood face to face \\dth 
the hurricane. He had barricaded the narrow strait, 
that highway of the waves. This, indeed, was the only 
possible course. It seemed as if the ocean, like other 
despots, might be brought to reason by the aid of barri- 
cades. The sloop might be considered secure on three 
sides. Closely wedged between the two interior walls 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


349 


of the rock, made fast by three anchorings, she was 
sheltered from the north by the Little Douvre, on the 
south by the Great one ; terrible escarpments, more 
accustomed to wreck vessels than to save them. On 
the western side she was protected by the frame of 
timbers made fast and nailed to the rocks — a tried 
barrier which had withstood the rude flood-tide of the 
sea; a- veritable citadel gate, having for its sides the 
columns of the rock — the two Douvres themselves. 
Nothing was to be feared from that side. It was on the 
eastern side only that there was danger. 

On that side there was no protection but the break- 
water. A breakwater is an apparatus for dividing and 
distributing. It requires at least two frames. Gilliatt 
had only had time to construct one. He was compelled 
to build the second in the very presence of the tempest. 

Fortunately the wind came from the north-west. The 
wind is not always adroit in its attacks. The north-west 
wind, which is the ancient “ galerno,” had little effect 
upon the Douvres. It assailed the rocks in flank, and 
drove the waves neither against the one nor the other of 
the two gullets ; so that, instead of rushing into a defile, 
they dashed themselves against a wall. 

But the currents of the wind are curved, and it was 
probable that there would be some sudden change. If 
it should veer to the east before the second frame could 
be constructed the peril would be great. The irruption 
of the sea into the gorge would be complete, and all 
would probably be lost. 

The wildness of the storm went on increasing. The 
essence of a tempest is the rapid succession of its blows. 
That is its strength ; but it is also its weakness. Its 
fury gives the opportunity to human intelligence, and 
man spies its weak points for his defence ; but under 
what overwhelming assaults ! No respite, no interrup- 
tion, no truce, no pause for taking breath. There seems 
an unspeakable cowardice in that prodigality of inex- 
haustible resources. 


350 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


All the tumult of the wide expanse rushed towards 
the Douvres. Voices were heard in the darkness. 
What could they be ? The ancient terror of the sea was 
there. At times they seemed to speak as if some one 
was uttering words of command. There were clamours, 
strange trepidations, and then that majestic roar which 
the mariners call the “ ocean cry.” The indefinite and 
flying eddies of the wind whistled, while curling the waves 
and flinging them Hke giant quoits, cast by invisible 
athletes, against the breakers. The enormous surf 
streamed over all the rocks ; torrents above ; foam 
below. Then the roaring was redoubled. No uproar 
of men or beasts could yield an idea of that din which 
mingled with the incessant breaking of the sea. The 
clouds cannonaded, the hailstones poured their volleys, 
the surf mounted to the assault. As far as eye could 
reach the sea was white ; ten leagues of yeasty water 
filled the horizon. Doors of fire were opened, clouds 
seemed burnt by clouds, and showed like smoke above 
a nebulous red mass, resembling burning embers. Float- 
ing conflagrations rushed together and amalgamated, 
each changing the shape of the other. From the midst 
of the dark roof a terrible arsenal appeared to be emptied 
out, hurling downward from the gulf, pell-mell, water- 
spouts, hail torrents, purple fire, phosphoric gleams, 
darkness, and lightnings. 

Meanwhile Gilliatt seemed to pay no attention to the 
storm. His head was bent over his work. The second 
framework began to approach completion. To every 
clap of thunder he replied with a blow of his hammer, 
making a cadence which was audible even amidst that 
tumult. He was bareheaded, for a gust had carried 
away his gaWienne. 

He suffered from a burning thirst. Little pools of rain 
had formed in the rocks around him. From time to time 
he took some water in the hollow of his hand and drank. 
Then, without even looking upward to observe the 
storm, he applied himself anew to his task. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


351 


All might depend upon a moment. He knew the fate 
that awaited him if his breakwater should not be com- 
pleted in time. Of what avail could it be to lose a 
moment in looking for the approach of death ? 

The turmoil around him was like that of a vast bub- 
bling cauldron. Crash and uproar were everywhere. 
Sometimes the lightning seemed to descend a sort of 
ladder. The electric flame returned incessantly to the 
same points of the rock, where there were probably 
metallic veins. Hailstones fell of enormous size. Gilliatt 
was compelled to shake the folds of his overcoat, even 
the pockets of which became filled with hail. 

The storm had now rotated to the west, and was 
expending its fury upon the barricades of the two 
Douvres. But Gilliatt had faith in his breakwaters, 
and with good reason. These barricades, made of a 
great portion of the forepart of the Durande, took the 
shock of the waves easily. Elasticity is a resistance. 
The experiments of Stephenson establish the fact that 
against the waves, which are themselves elastic, a raft 
of timber, joined and chained together in a certain 
fashion, will form a more powerful obstacle than a 
breakwater of masonry. The barriers of the Douvres 
fulfilled these conditions. They were, moreover, so 
ingeniously made fast that the waves striking them 
beneath were like hammers beating in nails, pressing 
and consolidating the work upon the rocks. To demolish 
them it would have been necessary to overthrow the 
Douvres themselves. The surf, in fact, was only able 
to cast over upon the sloop some flakes of foam. On 
that side, thanks to the barrier, the tempest ended only 
in harmless insult. Gilliatt turned his back upon the 
scene. He heard composedly its useless rage upon the 
rocks behind him. 

The foam-flakes coming from all sides were like flights 
of down. The vast irritated ocean deluged the rocks, 
dashed over them and raged within, penetrated into the 
network of their interior fissures, and issued again from 


352 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the granitic masses by the narrow chinks, forming a kind 
of inexhaustible fountains playing peacefully in the 
midst of that deluge. Here and there a silvery network 
fell gracefully from these spouts in the sea. 

The second frame of the eastern barrier was nearly 
completed. A few more knots of rope and ends of 
chains and this new rampart would be ready to play its 
part in barring out the storm. 

Suddenly there was a great brightness ; the rain 
ceased ; the clouds rolled asunder ; the wind had just 
shifted ; a sort of high, dark window opened in the 
zenith, and the lightnings were extinguished. The end 
seemed to have come. It was but the commencement. 

The change of wind was from the north-west to the 
north-east. 

The storm was preparing to burst forth again with 
a new legion of hurricanes. The north was about to 
mount to the assault. Sailors call this dreaded moment 
of transition the ** Return storm.” The southern wind 
brings most rain, the north wind most lightning. 

The attack, coming now from the east, was directed 
against the weak point of the position. 

This time Gilliatt interrupted his work and looked 
around him. 

He stood erect upon a curved projection of the rock 
behind the second barrier, which was nearly finished. 
If the first frame had been carried away it would have 
broken down the second, which was no yet consoHdated, 
and must have crushed him. GilHatt, in the place that 
he had chosen, must in that case have been destroyed 
before seeing the sloop, the machinery, and all his work 
shattered and swallowed up in the gulf. Such was the 
possibihty which awaited him. He accepted it, and 
contemplated it sternly. 

In that wreck of all his hope, to die at once would 
have been his desire ; to die first, as he would have 
regarded it — for the machinery produced in his mind 
the effect of a living being. He moved aside his hair. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


353 


which was beaten over his eyes by the wind, grasped 
his trusted mallet, drew himself up in a menacing atti- 
tude, and awaited the event. 

He was not kept long in suspense. 

A flash of lightning gave the signal ; the livid .opening 
in the zenith closed ; a driving torrent of rain fell ; then 
all became dark, save where the lightnings broke forth 
once more. The attack had recommenced in earnest. 

A heavy swell, visible from time to time in the blaze 
of the lightning, was rolling in the east beyond “ The 
Man ” rock. It resembled a huge wall of glass. It was 
green and without foam, and it stretched across the 
wide expanse. It was advancing towards the break- 
water, increasing as it approached. It was a singular 
kind of gigantic cylinder, rolling upon the ocean. The 
thunder kept up a hollow rumbling. 

The great wave struck “The Man rock, broke in 
twain, and passed beyond. The broken wave, rejoined, 
formed a mountain of water, and instead of advancing 
in parallel line as before, came down perpendicularly 
upon the breakwater. 

The shock was terrific ; the whole wave became a 
roaring surf. 

It is impossible for those who have not witnessed them 
to imagine those snowy avalanches which the sea thus 
precipitates, and under which it engulfs for the moment 
rocks of more than a hundred feet in height, such, for 
example, as the Great Anderlo at Guernsey, and the 
Pinnacle at Jersey. At Saint Mary of Madagascar it 
passes completely over the promontory of Tintingue. 

For some moments the sea drowned everything. 
Nothing was visible except the furious waters, an enor- 
mous breadth of foam, the whiteness of a winding- 
sheet blowing in the draught of a sepulchre ; nothing 
was heard but the roaring storm working devastation 
around. 

When the foam subsided, Gilliatt was still standing at 
his post. 


12 


354 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The barrier had stood firm. Not a chain was broken, 
not a nail displaced. It had exhibited under the trial 
the two chief qualities of a breakwater ; it had proved 
flexible as a hurdle and firm as a wall. The surf falling 
upon it had dissolved into a shower of drops. 

A river of foam rushing along the zigzags of the defile 
subsided as it approached the sloop. 

The man who had put this curb upon the fury of the 
ocean took no rest. 

The storm fortunately turned aside its fury for a 
moment. The fierce attack of the waves was renewed 
upon the wall of the rock. There was a respite, and 
Gilliatt took advantage of it to complete the interior 
barrier. 

The daylight faded upon his labours. The hurricane 
continued its violence upon the flank of the rocks with 
a mournful solemnity. The stores of fire and water in 
the sky poured out incessantly without exhausting them- 
selves. The undulations of the wind above and below 
were like the movements of a dragon. 

Nightfall brought scarcely any deeper night. The 
change was hardly felt, for the darkness was never 
complete. Tempests, alternately darkening and illumin- 
ing by their lightnings, are merely intervals of the visible 
and invisible. All is pale glare, and then all is darkness. 
Spectral shapes issue forth suddenly, and return as 
suddenly into the deep shade. 

A phosphoric zone, tinged with the hue of the aurora 
borealis, appeared Hke ghastly flames behind the dense 
clouds, giving to all things a wan aspect, and making 
the rain-drifts luminous. 

This uncertain light aided Gilliatt, and directed him in 
his operations. By its help he was enabled to raise the 
forward barrier. The breakwater was now almost com- 
plete. As he was engaged in making fast a powerful 
cable to the last beam, the gale blew directly in his face. 
This compelled him to raise his head. The wind had 
shifted abruptly to the north-east. The assault upon the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


355 


eastern gullet recommenced. Gilliatt cast his eyes 
around the horizon. Another great wall of water was 
approaching. 

The wave broke with a great shock ; a second fol- 
lowed ; then another and another still ; then five or 
six almost together ; then a last shock of tremendous 
force. 

This last wave, which was an accumulation of forces, 
had a singular resemblance to a living thing. It would 
not have been difficult to imagine in the midst of that 
swelling mass the shapes of fins and gill-coverings. It 
feU heavily and broke upon the barriers. Its almost 
animal form was tom to pieces in the shape of spouts 
and gushes, resembling the crushing to death of some sea 
hydra upon that block of rocks and timbers. The swell 
rushed through, subsiding but devastating as it went. 
The huge wave seerned to bite and chng to its victim as 
it died. The rock shook to its base. A savage howling 
mingled with the roar ; the foam flew far like the spout- 
ing of a leviathan. 

The subsidence exhibited the extent of the ravages of 
the surf. This last escalade had not been ineffectual. 
The breakwater had suffered this time. A long and 
heavy beam, tom from the first barrier, had been carried 
over the second, and hurled violently upon the pro- 
jecting rock on which Gilliatt had stood but a moment 
before. By good fortune he had not returned there. 
Had he done so, his death had been inevitable. 

There was a remarkable circumstance in the fall of 
this beam, which by preventing the framework rebotmd- 
ing, saved Gilliatt from greater dangers. It even proved 
useful to him, as will be seen in another way. 

Between the projecting rock and the interior wall of 
the defile there was a large interval, something like the 
notch of an axe, or the split of a wedge. One of the 
extremities of the timber hurled into the air by the 
waves had stuck fast into this notch in falling. The 
gap had become enlarged. 


356 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Gilliatt was struck with an idea. It was that of bear- 
ing heavily on the other extremity. 

The beam, caught by one end in the nook, which it 
had widened, projected from it straight as an out- 
stretched arm. This species of arm projected parallel 
with the anterior wall of the defile, and the disengaged 
end stretched from its resting-place about eighteen or 
twenty inches. A good distance for the object to be 
attained. 

Gilliatt raised himself by means of his hands, feet, and 
knees to the escarpment, and then turned his back, 
pressing both his shoulders against the enormous level. 
The beam was long, which increased its raising power. 
The rock was already loosened ; but he was compelled 
to renew his efforts again and again. The sweat-drops 
rolled from his forehead as rapidly as the spray. The 
fourth attempt exhausted all his powers. There was a 
cracking noise ; the gap spreading in the shape of a 
fissure opened its vast jaws, and the heavy mass fell 
into the narrow space of the defile with a noise like the 
echo of the thunder. 

The mass fell straight, and without breaking ; resting 
in its bed like a Druid cromlech precipitated in one piece. 

The beam which had served as a lever descended with 
the rock, and Gilliatt, stumbhng forward as it gave way, 
narrowly escaped falling. 

The bed of the pass at this part was full of huge 
round stones, and there was little water. The monohth 
lying in the boiling foam, the flakes of which fell on 
Gilliatt where he stood, stretched from side to side of 
the great parallel rocks of the defile, and formed a 
transversal wall, a sort of cross-stroke between the two 
escarpments. Its two ends touched the rocks. It had 
been a little too long to lie flat, but its summit of soft 
rock was struck off with the fall. The result of this fall 
was a singular sort of cul-de-sac, which may still be seen. 
The water behind this stony barrier is almost always 
tranquil. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


357 


This was a rampart more invincible still than the 
forward timbers of the Durande fixed between the two 
Douvres. 

The barrier came opportunely. 

The assaults of the sea had continued. The obstinacy 
of the waves is always increased by an obstacle. The 
first frame began to show signs of breaking up. One 
breach, however small, in a breakwater, is always serious. 
It inevitably enlarges, and there is no means of supply- 
ing its place, for the sea would sweep away the workmen. 

A flash which lighted up the rocks revealed to Gilhatt 
the nature of the mischief : the beams broken down, the 
ends of rope and fragments of chain swinging in the 
winds, and a rent in the centre of the apparatus. The 
second frame was intact. 

Though the block of stone so powerfully overturned 
by Gilliatt in the defile behind the breakwater was the 
strongest possible barrier, it had a defect. It was too 
low. The surge could not destroy, but could sweep 
over it. 

It was useless to think of building it higher. Nothing 
but masses of rock could avail upon a barrier of stone ; 
but how could such masses be detached ? or, if detached, 
how could they be moved, or raised, or piled, or fixed ? 
Timbers may be added, but rocks cannot. 

Gilliatt was not Epceladus. 

The very little height of this rocky isthmus rendered 
him anxious. 

The effects of this fault were not long in shoving 
themselves. The assaults upon the breakwater were 
incessant ; the heavy seas seemed not merely to rage, 
but to attack with determination to destroy it. A sort 
of trampling noise was heard upon the jolted framework. 

Suddenly the end of a binding strake, detached from 
the dislocated frame, was swept away over the second 
barrier and across the transversal rock, falling in the 
defile, where the water seized and carried it into the 
sinuosities of the pass. Gilliatt lost sight of it. It seemed 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


358 

probable that it would do some injury to the sloop. For- 
tunately, the water in the interior of the rocks, shut in 
on all sides, felt little of the commotion without. The 
waves there were comparatively trifling, and the shock 
was not likely to be very severe. For the rest, he had 
little time to spare for reflection upon this mishap. 
Every variety of danger was arising at once ; the tempest 
was concentrated upon the vulnerable point ; destruc- 
tion was imminent. 

The darkness was profound for a moment : the light- 
nings paused — a sort of sinister connivance. The 
cloud and the sea became one : there was a dull 
peal. 

This was followed by a terrible outburst. The frame 
which formed the front of the barriers was swept away. 
The fragments of beams were visible in the rolling waters. 
The sea was using the first breakwater as an engine for 
making a breach in the second. 

Gilliatt experienced the feeling of a general who sees 
his advanced guard driven in. 

The second construction of beams resisted the shock. 
The apparatus behind it was powerfully secured and 
buttressed. But the broken frame was heavy, and was 
at the mercy of the waves, which were incessantly hurling 
it forward and withdrawing it. The ropes and chains 
which remained unsevered prevented its entirely break- 
ing up, and the qualities which Gilliatt had given it as a 
means of defence made it, in the end, a more effective 
weapon of destruction. Instead of a buckler, it had 
become a battering-ram. Besides this, it was now full 
of irregularities from breaking ; ends of timbers pro- 
jected from all parts ; and it was, as it were, covered 
with teeth and spikes. No sort of arm could have been 
more effective, or more fitted for the handling of the 
tempest. It was the projectile, while the sea played the 
part of the catapult. 

The blows succeeded each other with a dismal regu- 
larity. Gilliatt, thoughtful and anxious, behind that 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


359 

barricaded portal, listened to the sound of death knock- 
ing loudly for admittance. 

He reflected with bitterness that, but for the fatal 
entanglement of the fxmnel of the Durande in the wreck, 
he would have been at that very moment, and even since 
the morning, once more at Guernsey, in the port, with 
the sloop out of danger and with the machinery saved. 

The dreaded moment arrived. The destruction was 
complete. There was a soimd like a death-rattle. The 
entire frame of the breakwater, the double apparatus 
crushed and mingled confusedly, came in a whirl of foam, 
rushing upon the stone barricade like chaos upon a 
mountain, where it stopped. Here the fragments lay 
together, a mass of beams penetrable by the waves, but 
still breaking their force. The conquered barrier 
struggled nobly against destruction. The waves had 
shattered it, and in their turn were shattered against 
it. Though overthrown, it still remained in some 
degree effective. The rock which barred its passage, an 
immovable obstacle, held it fast. The defile, as we have 
said, was very narrow at that point ; the victorious 
whirlwind had driven forward, mingled and piled up the 
wreck of the breakwater in this narrow pass. The very 
violence of the assault, by heaping up the mass and 
driving the broken ends one into the other, had con- 
tributed to make the pile firm. It was destroyed, but 
immovable. A few pieces of timber only were swept 
away and dispersed by the waves. One passed through 
the air very near to Gilliatt. He felt the counter current 
upon his forehead. 

Some waves, however, of that kind which in great 
tempests return with an imperturbable regularity, swept 
over the ruins of the breakwater. They feU into the 
defile, and in spite of the many angles of the passage, 
set the waters within in commotion. The waters began 
to roll through the gorge ominously. The mysterious 
embraces of the waves among the rocks were audible. 

What means were there of preventing this agitation 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


360 

extending as far as the sloop ? It would not require 
a long time for the blasts of wind to create a tempest 
through all the windings of the pass. A few heavy seas 
would be sufficient to stave in the sloop and scatter her 
burden. 

Gilliatt shuddered as he reflected. 

But he was not disconcerted. No defeat could daunt 
his soul. 

The hurricane had now discovered the true plan of 
attack, and was rushing fiercely between the two walls 
of the strait. 

Suddenly a crash was heard, resounding and prolong- 
ing itself through the defile at some distance behind 
him — a crash more terrible than any he had yet heard. 

It came from the direction of the sloop. 

Something disastrous was happening there. 

Gilliatt hastened towards it. 

From the eastern gullet where he was, he could not see 
the sloop on account of the sharp turns of the pass. 
At the last turn he stopped, and waited for the 
lightning. 

The first flash revealed to him the position of affairs. 

The rush of the sea through the eastern entrance had 
been met by a blast of wind from the other end. A 
disaster was near at hand. 

The sloop had received no visible damage ; anchored 
as she was, the storm had little power over her, but the 
carcass of the Durande was distressed. 

In such a tempest, the wreck presented a considerable 
surface. It was entirely out of the sea in the air, ex- 
posed. The breach which Gilliatt had made, and which 
he had passed the engine through, had rendered the hull 
still weaker. The keelson was snapped, the vertebral 
column of the skeleton was broken. 

The hurricane had passed over it. Scarcely more than 
this was needed to complete its destruction. The plank- 
ing of the deck had bent like an 0|^ned book. The 
dismemberment had begun. It was the noise of this 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 361 

dislocation which had reached Gilliatt’s ears in the midst 
of the tempest. 

The disaster which presented itself as he approached 
appeared almost irremediable. 

The square opening which he had cut in the keel had 
become a gaping wound. The wind had converted the 
smooth-cut hole into a ragged fracture. This transverse 
breach separated the wreck in two. The after-part, 
nearest to the sloop, had remained firm in its bed of 
rocks. The forward portion which faced him was 
hanging. A fracture, while it holds, is a sort of hinge. 
The whole mass oscillated, as the wind moved it, with 
a doleful noise. Fortunately the sloop was no longer 
beneath it. 

But this swinging movement shook the other portion 
of the hull, still wedged and immovable as it was between 
the two Douvres. From shaking to casting down the 
distance is not far. Under the obstinate assaults of the 
gale, the dislocated part might suddenly carry away 
the other portion, which almost touched the sloop. In 
this case, the whole wreck, together with, the sloop 
and the engine, must be swept into the sea and swal- 
lowed up. 

All this presented itself to his eyes. If was the end of 
all. How could it be prevented ? 

Gilliatt was one of those who are accustomed to snatch 
the means of safety out of danger itself. He collected 
his ideas for a moment. Then he hastened to his arsenal 
and brought his hatchet. 

The mallet had served him well ; it was now the turn 
of the axe. 

He mounted upon the wreck, got a footing on that 
part of the planking which had not given way, and 
leaning over the precipice of the pass between the 
Douvres, he began to cut away the broken joists and the 
planking which supported the hanging portion of the 
hull. 

His object was to effect the separation of the two 


362 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


parts of the wreck, to disencumber the half which re- 
mained firm, to throw overboard what the waves had 
seized, and thus share the prey with the storm. The 
hanging portion of the wreck, borne down by the wind 
and by its own weight, adhered only at one or two points. 
The entire wreck resembled a folding-screen, one leaf of 
which, half hanging, beat against the other. Five or 
six pieces of the planking only, bent and started, but 
not broken, still held. Their fractures creaked and en- 
larged at every gust, and the axe, so to speak, had but 
to help the labour of the wind. This more than half- 
severed condition, while it increased the facility of the 
work, also rendered it dangerous. The whole might give 
way beneath him at any moment. 

The tempest had reached its highest point. The con- 
vulsion of the sea reached the heavens. Hitherto the 
storm had been supreme, it had seemed to work its own 
imperious will, to give the impulse, to drive the waves 
to frenzy, while still preserving a sort of sinister lucidity. 
Below was fury — above anger. The heavens are the 
breath, the ocean only foam, hence the authority of the 
wind. But the intoxication of its own horrors had con- 
fused it. It had become a mere whirlwind ; it was a 
bhndness leading to night. There are times when tem- 
pests become frenzied, when the heavens are attacked 
with a sort of delirium ; when the firmament raves and 
hurls its lightnings blindly. No terror is greater than 
this. It is a hideous moment. ITie trembling of the 
rock was at its height. Every storm has a mysterious 
course, but now it loses its appointed path. It is the 
most dangerous point of the tempest. “ At that mo- 
ment,” says Thomas Fuller, “ the wind is a furious 
maniac.” It is at that instant that that continuous 
discharge of electricity takes place which Piddington 
calls “ the cascade of lightnings.” It is at that instant 
that in the blackest spot of the clouds, none know why, 
unless it be to spy the universal terror, a circle of blue 
light appears, which the Spanish sailors of ancient times 


i THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 363 

called the eye of the tempest, el ojo de la tempestad. 
That terrible eye looked down upon Gilliatt. 

Gilhatt on his part was surveying the heavens. He 
raised his head now. After every stroke of his hatchet 
he stood erect and gazed upwards, almost haughtily. 
He was, or seemed to be, too near destruction not to 
I feel self-sustained. Would he despair ? No ! In the 
presence of the wildest fury of the ocean he was watchful 
as well as bold. He planted his feet only where the 
wreck was firm. He ventured his life, and yet was 
careful ; for his determined spirit, too, had reached its 
highest point. His strength had grown tenfold greater. 
He had become heated with his own intrepidity. The 
strokes of his hatchet were like blows of defiance. He 
seemed to have gained in directness what the tempest 
had lost. A pathetic struggle ! On the one hand, an 
indefatigable will ; on the other, inexhaustible power. 
It was a contest with the elements for the prize at his 
feet. The clouds took the shape of Gorgon masks in 
the immensity of the heavens ; every possible form of 
terror appeared ; the rain came from the sea, the surf 
from the cloud ; phantoms of the wind bent down ; 
meteoric faces revealed themselves and were again 
eclipsed, leaving the darkness more monstrous : then 
there was nothing seen but the torrents coming from all 
sides — a boiling sea ; cumuli heavy with haU, ashen- 
hued, ragged-edged, appeared seized - with a sort of 
whirling frenzy ; strange rattlings filled the air ; the 
inverse currents of electricity observed by Volta darted 
their sudden flashes from cloud to cloud. The prolonga- 
tion of the lightnings was terrible ; the flashes passed 
near to Gilliatt. The very ocean seemed astonished. 
He passed to and fro upon the tottering wreck, making 
the deck tremble under his steps, striking, cutting, 
hacking with the hatchet in his hand, pallid in the gleam 
of the lightning, his long hair streaming, his feet naked, 
in rags, his face covered with the foam of the sea, but 
grand still amid that maelstrom of the thunderstorm. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


364 

Against these furious powers man has no weapon but 
his invention. Invention was Gilliatt’s triumph. His 
object was to allow all the dislocated portions of the 
wreck to fall together. For this reason he cut away 
the broken portions without entirely separating them, 
leaving some parts on which they still swung. Suddenly 
he stopped, holding his axe in the air. The operation 
was complete. The entire portion went with a crash. 

The mass rolled down between the two Douvres, just 
below Gilliatt, who stood upon the wreck, leaning over 
and observing the fall. It fell perpendicularly into the 
water, struck the rocks, and stopped in the defile before 
touching the bottom. Enough remained out of the 
water to rise more than twelve feet above the waves. 
The vertical mass of planking formed a wall between the 
two Douvres ; like the rock overturned crosswise higher 
up the defile, it allowed only a slight stream of foam to 
pass through at its two extremities, and thus was a 
fifth barricade improvised by Gilliatt against the tempest 
in that passage of the seas. 

The hurricane itself, in its blind fury, had assisted in 
the construction of this last bsirrier. F| 

It was fortunate that the proximity of the two walls 
had prevented the mass of wreck from falling to the 
bottom. This circumstance gave the barricade greater 
height ; the water, besides, could flow under the obstacle, 
which diminished the power of the waves. That which 
passes below cannot pass over. This is partly the secret 
of the floating breakwater. 

Henceforth, let the storm do what it might, there was 
nothing to fear for the sloop or the machinery. The 
water around them could not become agitated again. 
Between the barrier of the Douvres, which covered them 
on the west, and the barricade which protected them 
from the east, no heavy sea or wind could reach them. 

Gilliatt had plucked safety out of the catastrophe 
itself. The storm had been his fellow-labourer in the 
work. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


3^5 


This done, he took a little water in the palm of his 
hand from one of the rain-pools, and drank ; and 
then, looking upward at the storm, said with a smile, 
“ Bungler I ” 

Human intelligence combating with brute force experi- 
ences an ironical joy in demonstrating the stupidity of 
its antagonist, and compelling it to serve the very objects 
of its fury, and Gilliatt felt something of that immemorial 
desire to insult his invisible enemy, which is as old as 
the heroes of the Iliad. 

He descended to the sloop and examined it by the 
gleam of the lightning. The relief which he had been 
able to give to his distressed bark was well-timed. She 
had been much shaken during the last hour, and had 
begun to give way. A hasty glance revealed no serious 
injury. Nevertheless, he was certain that the vessel 
had been subjected to violent shocks. As soon as the 
waves had subsided, the hull had righted itself ; the 
anchors had held fast ; as to the machine, the four 
chains had supported it admirably. 

While Gilliatt was completing this survey, something 
white passed before his eyes and vanished in the gloom. 
It was a sea-mew. 

No sight could be more welcome in tempestuous weather. 
When the birds reappear the storm is departing. The 
thunder redoubled ; another good sign. 

The violent efforts of the storm had broken its force. 
All mariners know that the last ordeal is severe, but 
short. The excessive violence of the thunderstorm is 
the herald of the end. 

The rain stopped suddenly. Then there was only a 
surly rumbling in the heavens. The storm ceased with 
the suddenness of a plank falling to the ground. The 
immense mass of clouds became disorganized. A strip 
of clear sky appeared between them. Gilliatt was 
astonished : it was broad daylight. 

The tempest had lasted nearly twenty hours. 

The wind which had brought the storm carried it 


366 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


away. A dark pile was diffused over the horizon, the 
broken clouds were flying in confusion across the sky. 
From one end to the other of the hne there was a move- 
ment of retreat : a long muttering was heard, gradually 
decreasing, a few last drops of rain fell, and all those 
dark masses charged with thunder departed like a terrible 
multitude of chariots. 

Suddenly the wide expanse of sky became blue. 

Gilliatt perceived that he was wearied. Sleep swoops 
down upon the exhausted frame like a bird upon its 
prey. He drooped and sank upon the deck of the bark 
without choosing his position, and there slept. Stretched 
at length and inert, he remained thus for some hours, 
scarcely distinguishable from the beams and joists among 
which he lay. 


BOOK IV.— PITFALLS IN THE WAY. 


I HE WHO IS HUNGRY IS NOT ALONE, 

f 

WheIn he awakened he was hungry. 

The sea was growing calmer. But there was still a 
heav y swell, which made his departure, for the present 
at least, impossible. The day, too, was far advanced. 
For Jjthe sloop with its burden to get to Guernsey before 
midn'ight, it was necessary to start in the morning. 

Although pressed by himger, Gilliatt began by strip- 
ping .himself, the only means of getting warmth. His 
clothing was saturated by the storm, but the rain had 
washed out the sea-water, which rendered it possible to 
dry them. 

He kept nothing on but his trousers, which he turned 
up nearly to the knees. 

His overcoat, jacket, overalls, and sheepskin he spread 
out and fixed with large round stones here and there. 

Then he thought of eating. 

He had recourse to his knife, which he was careful to 
sharpen, and to keep always in good condition ,* and 
he detached from the rocks a few limpets, similar in kind 
to the clonisses of the Mediterranean. It is well known 
that these are eaten raw ; but after so many labours, so 
various and so rude, the pittance was meagre. His 
biscuit was gone * but of water he had now abundance. 


368 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


He took advantage of the receding tide to wander 
among the rocks in search of crayfish. There was extent 
enough of rock to hope for a successful search. 

But he had not reflected that he could do nothing 
with these without fire to cook them. If he had taken 
the trouble to go to his store-cavern, he would have 
found it inundated with the rain. His wood and coal 
were drowned, and of his store of tow, which served, him 
for tinder, there was not a fibre which was not saturated. 
No means remained of lighting a fire. 

For the rest, his blower was completely disorganized. 
The screen of the hearth of his forge was broken down ; 
the storm had sacked and devastated his workshop. 
With what tools and apparatus had escaped the general 
wreck, he could still have done carpentry work ; but he 
could not have accomplished any of the labours of the 
smith. Gilliatt, however, never thought of his work- 
shop for a moment. 

Drawn in another direction by the pangs of hunger, 
he had pursued without much reflection his search for 
food. He wandered, not in the gorge of the rocks, but 
outside among the smaller breakers. It was there that 
the Durande, ten weeks previously, had first struck upon 
the sunken redf. 

For the search that Gilliatt was prosecuting, this part 
was more favourable than the interior. At low water 
the crabs are accustomed to crawl out into the air. They 
seem to like to warm themselves in the sun, where they 
swarm sometimes to the disgust of loiterers, who recog- 
nize in these creatures, with their awkward sidelong gait, 
climbing clumsily from crack to crack the lower stages 
of the rocks hke the steps of a staircase, a sort of sea 
vermin. 

For two months Gilliatt had Hved upon these vermin 
of the sea. 

On this day, however, the crayfish and crabs were 
both wanting. The tempest had driven them into their 
solitary retreats ; and they had not yet mustered courage 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


369 


tot venture abroad. Gilliatt held his open knife in his 
ha^nd, and from time to time scraped a cockle from under 
thije bunches of seaweed, which he ate while still walking. 

(He could not have been far from the very spot where 
SitB^ur Clubin had perished. 

.y\s Gilliatt was determining to content himself with 
th^^ sea-urchins and the chdtaignes de mer, a httle clatter- 
ing^ noise at his feet aroused his attention. A large 
craib, startled by his approach, had just dropped into a 
pocol. The water Wcis shallow, and he did not lose sight 
of i^t. 

B^Ie chased the crab along the base of the rock ; the 
cralb moved fast. 


S uddenly it was gone. 

l(t had buried itself in some crevice under the rock. 


Glilliatt clutched the projections of the rock, and 
strejtched out to observe where it shelved away under 
the I water. 

A/S he suspected, there was an opening there in which 
the creature had evidently taken refuge. It was more 
thai:;i a crevice ; it was a kind of porch. 

The sea entered beneath it, but was not deep. The 
bottbm was visible, covered with large pebbles. The 
pebbles were green and clothed with confervca, indicating 
that they were never dry. They were like the tops of 
a nulnber of heads of infants, covered with a kind of 
green hair. 

Holding his knife between his teeth, Gilliatt descended, 
by the help of feet and hands, from the upper part of the 
escarpment, and leaped into the water. It reached 
almost to his shoulders. 

He made his way through the porch, and found him- 
self in a blind passage, with a roof in the form of a rude 
arch over his head. The walls were polished and slippery. 
The crab was nowhere visible. He gained his feet and 
advanced in daylight growing fainter, so that he began 
to lose the power to distinguish objects. 

At about fifteen paces the vaulted roof ended over- 


370 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


\ 

head. He had penetrated beyond the blind passa^^e. 
There was here more space, and consequently more day- 
light. The pupils of his eyes, moreover, had dilated ; 
he could see pretty clearly. He was taken by surprise. 

He had made his way again into the singular cavern 
which he had visited in the previous month. The only 
difference was that he had entered by the way of the s>ea. 

It was through the submarine arch, that he had re- 
marked before, that he had just entered. At certain 
low tides it was accessible. 

His eyes became more accustomed to the place. His 
vision became clearer and clearer. He was astonished. 
He found himself again in that extraordinary palace of 
shadows ; saw again before his eyes that vaulted roof, 
those columns, those purple and blood-like stains, that 
vegetation rich with gems, and at the farther end, that 
crypt or sanctuary, and that altar-like stone. He itook 
little notice of these details, but their impression wcls in 
his mind, and he saw that the place was unchanged. 

He observed before him, at a certain height in the 
wall, the crevice through which he had penetrated the 
first time, and which, from the point where he now 
stood, appeared inaccessible. 

Near the moulded arch, he remarked those low dark 
grottoes, a sort of caves within the cavern, which he 
had already observed from a distance. He now stood 
nearer to them. The entrance to the nearest to him 
was out of the water, and easily approachable. Nearer 
still than this recess he noticed, above the level of the 
water, and within reach of his hand, a horizontal fissure. 
It seemed to him probable that the crab had taken refuge 
there, and he plunged his hand in as far as he was able, 
and groped about in that dusky aperture. 

Suddenly he felt himself seized by the arm. A strange 
indescribable horror thrilled through him. 

Some living thing — thin, rough, flat, cold, slimy — ^had 
twisted itself round his naked arm, in the dark depth 
below. It crept upward towards his chest. Its pres- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


371 


sure was dke a tightening cord, its steady persistence like 
ihztt of a screw. In less than a moment some mysterious 
spiiral form had passed round his wrist and elbow, and 
hadl reached his shoulder. A sharp point penetrated 
beriieath the armpit. 

C^illiatt recoiled ; but he had scarcely power to move ! 
He \ was, as it were, nailed to the place. With his left 
hanjd, which was disengaged, he seized his knife, which 
he fetill held between his teeth, and with that hand, 
holding the knife, he supported himself against the rocks, 

I white he made a desperate effort to withdraw his arm. 

1 He '^succeeded only in disturbing his persecutor, which 
I woupd itself still tighter. It was supple as leather, 
stroiig as steel, cold as night. 

A (second form — sharp, elongated, and narrow — issued 
out bf the crevice, like a tongue out of monstrous jaws. 
It seemed to lick his naked body. Then suddenly 
stretjching out, it became longer and thinner, as it crept 
over! his skin, and wound itself round him. At the same 
time) a terrible sense of pain, comparable to nothing he 
had lever known, compelled all his muscles to contract. 
He felt upon his skin a number of flat rounded points. 
It seemed as if innumerable suckers had fastened to his 
flesh ^and were about to drink his blood. 

A third long undulating shape issued from the hole 
in th^ rock ; seemed to feel its way about his body ; 
lasheo) round his ribs like a cord, and fixed itself 
there. \ 

AgoiW when at its height is mute. Gillie tt uttered 
no cry.\ There was sufficient hght for him to see the 
repulsive forms which had entangled themselves about 
him. A fourth ligature, but this one swift aa an arrow, 
darted towards his stomach, and wound aiound him 
there. 

It was impossible to sever or tear away ^he slimy 
bands which were twisted tightly round his body, and 
were adhering by a number of points. Each of the 
points was the focus of frightful and singular pangs. 


372 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


It was as if numberless small mouths were devouring ig j 
him at the same time. c. j 

A fifth long, slimy, ribbon-shaped strip issued fro3m ] 
the hole. It passed over the others, and wound itseslf j 
tightty around his chest. The compression increas<fed i 
his sufferings. He could scarcely breathe. -i 

These Hving thongs were pointed at their extremitises, j 
but broadened like a blade of a sword towards its h:‘tlt. j 
All belonged evidently to the same centre. They cr^jpt : 
and glided about him ; he felt the strange points of | 
pressure, which seemed to him like mouths, change tbleir 
places from time to time. t i 

Suddenly a large, round, flattened, glutinous m ass ! 
issued from beneath the crevice. It was the centore; \ 
the five thongs were attached to it like spokes to Hhe I 

nave of a wheel. On the opposite side of this disgusting \ 

monster appeared the commencement of three oti;her \ 
tentacles, the ends of which remained under the rock, j 
In the middle of this slimy mass appeared two eyes. 

The eyes were fixed on Gilliatt. ^ 

He recognized the devil-fish. k I 


II. 

THE MONSTER. 

It is difficult for those who have not seen it to believe 
in the existence of the devil-fish. 

Compared to this creature, the ancient hydras are in- 
significant. 

At times w^e are tempted to imagine that the vague 
forms which float in our dreams may encounter in the 
realm of the Possible attractive forces, having power to 
fix their lineaments, and shape living beings, out of these 
creatures of our slumbers. The Unknown has power 
over these strange visions, and out of them composes 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


373 


monsters. Orpheus, Homer, and Hesiod imagined only 
the Chimera : Providence has created this terrible crea- 
ture of the sea. 

Creation abounds in monstrous forms of life. The 
wherefore of this perplexes and affrights the rehgious 
thinker. 

If terror were the object of its creation, nothing could 
be imagined more perfect than the devil-fish. 

The whale has enormous bulk, the devil-fish is com- 
paratively small ; the jararaca makes a hissing noise, 
the devil-fish is mute ; the rhinoceros has a horn, the 
devil-fish has none ; the scorpion has a dart, the devil- 
fish has no dart ; the shark has sharp fins, the devil-fish 
has no fins ; the vespertiliobat has wings with claws, the 
devil-fish has no wings ; the porcupine has his spines, 
the devil-fish has no spines ; the sword-fish has his 
sword, the devil-fish has none ; the torpedo has its 
electric spark, the devil-fish has none ; the toad has its 
poison, the devil-fish has none ; the viper has its venom, 
the devil-fish has no venom ; the lion has its talons, the 
devil-fish has no talons ; the griffon has its beak, the 
devil-fish has no beak ; the crocodile has its jaws, the 
devil-fish has no teeth. 

The devil-fish has no muscular organization, no menac- 
ing cry, no breastplate, no horn, no dart, no claw, no 
tad with which to hold or bruise ; no cutting fins, or 
wings ^^dth nails, no prickles, no sword, no electric dis- 
charge, no poison, no talons, no beak, no teeth. Yet he 
is of all creatures the most formidably armed. 

What, then, is the devil-fish ? It is the sea vam- 
pire. 

The swimmer who, attracted by the beauty of the 
spot, ventures among breakers in the open sea, where 
the still waters hide the splendours of the deep, or in 
the hollows of unfrequented rocks, in unknown caverns 
aboimding in sea plants, Testacea, and Crustacea, imder 
the deep portals of the orean, runs the risk of meeting 
it. If that fata should be yours, be not curious, but 


374 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


fly. The intruder enters there dazzled, but quits the 
spot in terror. 

This frightful apparition, which is always possible 
among the rocks in the open sea, is a grayish form 
which undulates in the water. It is of the thickness of 
a man's arm, and in length nearly five feet. Its outline ' 
is ragged. Its form resembles an umbrella closed, and ' 
without handle. This irregular mass advances slowly 
towards you. Suddenly it opens, and eight radii issue 
abruptly from around a face with two eyes. These 
radii are alive ; . their undulation is like lambent flames ; 
they resemble, when opened, the spokes of a wheel, of 
four or five feet in diameter. A terrible expansion ! 

It springs upon its prey. 

The devil-fish harpoons its victim. 

It winds around the sufferer, covering and entangling 
him in its long folds. Underneath it is yellow ; above, 
a dull, earthy hue : nothing could render that inexplic- 
able shade dust-coloured. Its form is spider-like, but 
its tints are like those of the chameleon. When irritated \ 
it becomes violet. Its most honible characteristic is its j 
softness. ^ 

Its folds strangle, its contact paralyzes. 

It has an aspect like gangrened or scabrous flesh. It : 
is a monstrous embodiment of disease. ’ 

It adheres closely to its prey, and cannot be torn 
away — a fact which is due to its power of exhausting 
air. The eight antennae, large at their roots, duninish 
gradually, and end in needle-like points. Underneath 
each of these feelers range two rows of pustules, decreas- 
ing in size — the largest ones near the head, the smaller 
at the extremities. Each row contains twenty-five of 
these. There are, therefore, fifty pustules to each feeler, 
and the creature possesses in the whole four hundred. 
These pustules are capable of acting like cupping-glasses. 
They are cartilaginous substances, cylindrical, homy, 
and livid. Upon the large species they diminish gradu- 
ally from the diameter of a five-franc piece to the size 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


375 


of a split pea. These small tubes can be thrust out and 
withdrawn by the animal at will. They are capable of 
piercing to a depth of more than an inch. 

This sucking apparatus has all the regularity and 
delicacy of a keyboard. It stands forth at one moment 
and disappears the next. The most perfect sensitive- 
ness cannot equal the contractibility of these suckers, 
always proportioned to the internal movement of the 
animal and its exterior circumstances. The monster is 
endowed with the qualities of the sensitive plant. 

This animal is the same as those which mariners 
call Poulps, which science designates Cephalopterge, and 
which ancient legends call Krakens. It is the English 
sailors who call them “ Devil fish,” and sometimes 
' Bloodsuckers. In the Channel Islands they are called 
j pieuvres, 

^ They are rare at Guernsey, very smaU at Jersey ; but 
near the island of Sark, are numerous as well as very 
large. 

An engraving in Sonnini's edition of Buffon represents 
a Cephaloptera crushing a frigate. Denis Montfort, in 
fact, considers the Poulp, or Qctopod, of high latitudes, 
strong enough to destroy a ship. Bory Saint Vincent 
doubts this ; but he shows that in our regions they will 
attack men. Near Brecq-Hou, in Sark, they show a 
cave where a devil-fish a few years since seized and 
drowned a lobster-fisher. Peron and Lamarck are in 
error in their belief that the ” poulp ” having no fins 
cannot swim. He who writes these lines has seen with 
his own eyes, at Sark, in the cavern called the Boutiques, 
a pieuvre swimming and pursuing a bather. When cap- 
tured and killed, this specimen was found to be four 
English feet broad, and it was possible to count its four 
hundred suckers. The monster thrust them out con- 
vulsively in the agony of death. 

According to Denis Montfort, one of those observers 
whose marvellous intuition sinks or raises them to the 
level of magicians, the poulp is almost endowed with 


376 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


the passions of man : it has its hatreds. In fact, in the 
Absolute to be hideous is to hate. 

Hideousness struggles under the natural law of elimina- 
tion, which necessarily renders it hostile. 

When swimming* the devil-fish rests, so to speak, in its 
sheath. It swims with all its parts drawn close. It 
may be likened to a sleeve sewn up with a closed fist 
within. The protuberance, which is the head, pushes 
the water aside and advances with a vague undulatory 
movement. Its two eyes, though large, are indistinct, 
being of the colour of the water. 

'\\^en in ambush, or seeking its prey, it retires into 
itself, grows smaller and condenses itself. It is then 
scarcely distinguishable in the submarine twilight. 

At such times it looks like a mere ripple in the water. 
It resembles anything except a living creature. 

The devil-fish is crafty. When its victim is unsus- 
picious, it opens suddenly. 

A glutinous mass, endowed with a malignant will, 
what can be more horrible ? 

It is in the most beautiful azure depths of the limpid 
water that this hideous, voracious polyp delights. It 
always conceals itself — a fact which increases its terrible 
associations. When they are seen, it is almost invari- 
ably after they have been captured. 

At night, however, and particularly in the hot season, 
it becomes phosphorescent. These horrible creatures 
have their passions, their submarine nuptials. Then it 
adorns itself, burns and illumines ; and from the height 
of some rock it may be seen in the deep obscurity of 
the waves below, expanding with a pale irradiation — a 
spectral sun. 

The devil-fish not only swims, it walks. It is partly 
fish, partly reptile. It crawls upon the bed of the sea. 
At these times it makes use of its eight feelers, and 
creeps along in the fashion of a species of swift-moving 
caterpillar. 

It has no blood, no bones, no flesh, It is soft and 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


377 

flabby — a skin with nothing inside. Its eight tentacles 
may be turned inside out like the fingers of a glove. 

It has a single orifice in the centre of its radii, which 
appears at first to be neither the vent nor the mouth. 
It is, in fact, both one and the other. The orifice per- 
forms a double function. The entire creature is cold. 

The jelly-fish of the Mediterranean is repulsive. Con- 
tact with that animated gelatinous substance which 
envelops the bather, in which the hands sink, and the 
nails scratch ineffectively ; which can be tom without 
killing it, and which can be plucked off without entirely 
removing it — that fluid and yet tenacious creature which 
slips through the fingers — is disgusting; but no horror 
can equal the sudden apparition of the devil-fish, that 
Medusa with its eight serpents. 

No grasp is like the sudden strain of the cephaloptera. 

It is with the sucking apparatus that it attacks. The 
victim is oppressed by a vacuum drawing at numberless 
points ; it is not a clawing or a biting, but an indescrib- 
able scarification. A tearing of the flesh is terrible, but 
less terrible than a sucking of the blood. Claws are 
harmless compared with the horrible action of these 
natural air-cups. The talons of the wild beast enter 
into your flesh ; but with the cephaloptera it is you 
who enter into the creature. The muscles swell, the 
fibres of the body are contorted, the skin cracks under 
the loathsome oppression, the blood spurts out and 
mingles horribly with the lymph of the monster, which 
clings to its victim by innumerable hideous mouths. 
The hydra incorporates itself with the man ; the man 
becomes one with the hydra. The spectre lies upon 
you : the tiger can only devour you ; the devil-fish, 
horrible, sucks your life-olood away. He draws you to 
him, and into himself ; while bound down, glued to the 
^ound, powerless, you feel yourself gradu^y emptied 
into this horrible pouch, which is the monster itself. 

These strange animals, Science, in accordance with its 
habit of excessive caution even in the face of facts, at 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


■! 

I 


378 

first rejects as fabulous ; then she decides to observe ; 
them ; then she dissects, classifies, catalogues, and ; 
labels ; then procures specimens, and exhibits them in 
glass cases in museums. They enter then into her , 
nomenclature ; are designated molluscs, invertebrata, 
radiata : she determines their position in the animal 
world a little above the calamaries, a little below the 
cuttle-fish ; she finds for these hydras ot the sea an 
analogous creature in fresh water called the argyronecte : 
she divides them into great, medium, and small kinds ; 
she admits more readily the existence of the small than 
of the large species, which is, however, the tendency of 
science in all countries, for she is by nature more micro- 
scopic than telescopic. She regards them from the point 
of view of their construction, and calls them Cephalop- 
tera ; counts their antennae, and calls them Octopedes. ' 
This done, she leaves them. Where science drops them 
philosophy takes them up. 

Philosophy in her turn studies these creatures. She 
goes both less far and further. She does not dissect, 
but meditate. Where the scalpel has laboured she 
plunges the hypothesis. She seeks the final cause. 
Eternal perplexity of the thinker. These creatures 
disturb his ideas of the Creator. They are hideous 
surprises. They are the death’s-head at the feast of 
contemplation. The philosopher determines their char- 
acteristics in dread. They are the concrete forms of 
evil. What attitude can he take towards this treason 
of creation against herself ? To whom can he look for 
the solution of these riddles ? The Possible is a terrible 
matrix. Monsters are mysteries in their concrete form. 
Portions of shade issue from the mass, and something 
within detaches itself, rolls, floats, condenses, borrows 
elements from the ambient darkness, becomes subject 
to unknown polarizations, assimies a kind of life, furnishes 
itself with some unimagined form from the obscurity, 
and with some terrible spirit from the miasma, and 
wanders ghost-like among hving things. It is as if night 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


379 

itself assumed the forms of animals. But for what good ? 
with what object ? Thus we come again to the eternal 
questioning. 

These animals are indeed phantoms as much as mon- 
sters. They are proved and yet improbable. Their fate 
is to exist in spite of h 'priori reasonings. They are the 
amphibia of the shore which separates life from death. 
Their unreality makes their existence puzzling. They 
touch the frontier of man’s domain and people the region 
of chimeras. We deny the possibility of the vampire, 

I and the cephaloptera appears. Their swarming is a 
certainty which disconcerts our confidence. Optimism, 
which is nevertheless in the right, becomes silenced in 
their presence. They form the visible extremity of the 
dark circles. They mark the transition of our reality 
into another. They seem to belong to that commence- 
ment of terrible life which the dreamer sees confusedly 
through the loophole of the night. 

That multiplication of monsters, first in the Invisible, 
then in the Possible, has been suspected, perhaps per- 
i ceived, by magi and philosophers in their austere ecstasies 
i and profound contemplations. Hence the conjecture of 
a material hell. The demon is simply the invisible tiger. 
The wild beast which devours souls has been presented 
to the eyes of human beings by St. John, and by Dante 
in his vision of Hell. 

If, in truth, the invisible circles of creation continue 
indefinitely, if after one there is yet another, and so forth 
in illimitable progression ; if that chain, which for our 
part we are resolved to doubt, really exist, the cepha- 
loptera at one extremity proves Satan at the other. It 
is certain that ’the wrongdoer at one end proves the 
existence of wrong at the other. 

Every malignant creature, like evety perverted intelli- 
gence, is a sphinx. A terrible sphinx propounding a 
terrible riddle — the riddle of the existence of Evil. 

It is this perfection of evil which has sometimes 
sufficed to incline powerful intellects to a faith in the 


38 o 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


duality of the Deity, towards that terrible bifrons of the 
Manichaeans. 

A piece of silk stolen during the last war from the ■ 
palace of the Emperor of China represents a shark eat- = 
ing a crocodile, who is eating a serpent, who is devour- ; 
ing an eagle, who is preying on a swallow, who in his turn j 
is eating a caterpillar. | 

All nature which is under our observation is thus i 
alternately devouring and devoured. The prey prey on i 
each other. ^ 

Learned men, however, who are also philosophers, and | 
therefore optimists in their view of creation, find, or ' 
believe they find, an explanation. Among others, I 
Bonnet of Geneva, that mysterious exact thinker, who 
was opposed to Buffon, as in later times Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire has been to Cuvier, was struck with the idea of 
the final object. His notions may be summed up thus : 
universal death necessitates universal sepulture ; the 
devourers are the sextons of the system of nature. All 
created things enter into and form the elements of other. 

To decay is to nourish. Such is the terrible law from 
which not even man himself escapes. 

In our world of twilight this fatal order of things pro- 
duces monsters. You ask for what purpose. We find 
the solution here. 

But is this the solution ? Is this the answer to our 
questionings ? And if so, why not some different order 
of things ? Thus the question returns. 

Let us live : be it so. 

But let us endeavour that death shall be progress. 
Let us aspire to an existence in which ^ these mysteries 
shall be made clear. Let us follow that conscience which 
leads us thither. 

For let us never forget that the highest is only attained 
through the high. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


381 


III. 

> ANOTHER KIND OF SEA-COMBAT. 

Such was the creature in whose power Gilliatt had fallen 
for some minutes. 

The monster was the inhabitant of the grotto, the 
terrible genii of the place — a kind of sombre demon of 
the water. 

All the splendours of the cavern existed for it alone. 

On the day of the previous month when Gilliatt had 
first penetrated into the grotto, the dark outline, vaguely 
perceived by him in the ripples of the secret waters, was 
this monster. It was here in its home. 

When entering for the second time into the cavern in 
pursuit of the crab he had observed the crevice in which 
he supposed that the crab had taken refuge, the pieuvre 
was there lying in wait for prey. 

Is it possible to imagine that secret ambush ? 

No bird would brood, no egg would burst to life, no 
flower would dare to open, no breast to give milk, no 
heart to love, no spirit to soar, under the influence of 
that apparition of evil watching with sinister patience 
in the dusk. 

Gilliatt had thrust his arm deep into the opening ; 
the monster had snapped at it. It held him fast, as the 
spider holds the fly. 

He was in the water up to his belt ; his naked feet 
clutching the slippery roundness of the huge stones at the 
bottom ; his right arm bound and rendered powerless 
by the flat coils of the long tentacles of the creature, 
and his body almost hidden under the folds and cross 
folds of this horrible bandage. 

Of the eight arms of the devil-fish three adhered to 
the rock, while five encircled Gilliatt. In this way, 
clinging to the granite on the one hand, and with the 
other to its human prey, it enchained him to the rock. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


382 

Two hundred and fifty suckers were upon him, torment- 
ing him with agony and loathing. He was grasped by . 
gigantic hands, the fingers of which were each nearly a 
yard long, and furnished inside with living blisters eat- 
ing into the flesh. 

As we have said, it is impossible to tear oneself from 
the folds of the devil-fish. The attempt ends only in a 
firmer grasp. The monster clings with more determined 
force. Its effort increases with that of its victim ; every 
struggle produces a tightening of its ligatures. 

GUliatt had but one resource, his knife. 

His left hand only was free ; but the reader knows 
with what power he could use it. It might have been 
said that he had two right hands. 

His open knife was in his hand. 

The antenna of the devil-fish cannot be cut ; it is a 
leathery substance impossible to divide with the knife — • 
it slips under the edge ; its position in attack also is such 
that to cut it would be to wound the victim's own flesh. 

The creature is formidable, but there is a way of resist- 1 
ing it. The fishermen of Sark know this, as does any ! 
one who has seen them execute certain abrupt move- * 
ments in the sea. The porpoises know it also ; they j 
have a way of biting the cuttle-fish which decapitates j 
it. Hence the frequent sight on the sea of pen-fish, i 
poulps, and cuttle-fish without heads. : 

The cephaloptera, in fact, is only vulnerable through 
the head. ; 

Gilliatt was no‘t ignorant of this fact. 

He had never seen a devil-fish of this size. His first ■ 
encounter was with one of the larger species. Another 
would have been powerless with terror. 

With the devil-fish as with a furious bull there is a 
certain moment in the conflict which must be seized. It 
is the instant when the bull lowers the neck ; it is the 
instant when the devil-fish advances its head. The 
movement is rapid. He who loses that moment is 
destroyed. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 383 

The things we have described occupied only a few 
moments. Gilliatt, however, felt the increasing power 
of its innumerable suckers. 

The monster is cunning ; it tries first to stupefy its 
prey. It seizes and then pauses awhile. 

Gilliatt grasped his knife ; the sucking increased. 

He looked at the monster, which seemed to look at 
him. 

Suddenly it loosened from the rock its sixth antenna, 
and darting it at him, seized him by the left arm. 

At the same moment it advanced its head with a vio- 
lent movement. In one second more its mouth would 
have fastened on his breast. Bleeding in the sides, and 
with his two arms entangled, he would have been a dead 
man. 

But Gilliatt was watchful. He avoided the antenna, 
and at the moment when the monster darted forward to 
fasten on his breast, he struck it with the knife clenched 
in his left hand. There were two convulsions in opposite 
directions — that of the devil-fish and that of its prey. 
The movement was rapid as a double flash of lightnings. 

He had plunged the blade of his knife into the flat 
slimy substance, and by a rapid movement, like the 
flourish of a whip in the air, describing a circle round 
the two eyes, he wrenched the head off as a man would 
draw a tooth. 

The struggle was ended. The folds relaxed. The 
monster dropped away, like the slow detaching of bands. 
The four hundred suckers, deprived of their sustaining 
power, dropped at once from the man and the rock. 
The mass sank to the bottom of the water. 

Breathless with the struggle, Gilliatt could perceive 
upon the stones at his feet two shapeless, slimy heaps— 
the head on one side, the remainder of the monster on 
the other. 

Fearing, nevertheless, some convulsive return of his 
agony, he recoiled to avoid the reach of the dreaded 
tentacles. 


384 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


But the monster was quite dead. 
Gilliatt closed his knife. 


rv. 

NOTHING IS HIDDEN, NOTHING LOST. 

It was time that he killed the devil-fish. He was almost 
suffocated. His right arm and his chest were purple. 
Numberless little swelhngs were distinguishable upon 
them ; the blood flowed from them here and there. ' 
The remedy for these wounds is sea -water. Gilliatt ! 
plunged into it, rubbing himself at the same time with j 
the palms of his hands. The swellings disappeared 
under the friction. 

By stepping farther into the waters he had, without 
perceiving it, approached to the species of recess already 
observed by him near the crevice where he had been 
attacked by the devil-fish. 

This recess stretched obliquely under the great walls 
of the cavern, and was dry. The large pebbles which 
had become heaped up there had raised the bottom above 
the level of ordinary tides. The entrance was a rather 
large elliptical arch ; a man could enter by stooping. 
The green light of the submarine grotto penetrated into 
it and lighted it feebly. 

It happened that, while hastily rubbing his skin, 
Gilliatt raised his eyes mechanically. 

He was able to see far into the cavern. 

He shuddered. 

He fancied that he perceived, in the farthest depth of 
the dusky recess, something smiling. 

Gilliatt had never heard the word “ hallucination,** but 
he was familiar with the idea. Those mysterious en- 
counters with the invisible, which, for the sake of avoiding 
the difficulty of explaining them, we call hallucinations. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

are in nature. Illusions or realities, visions are a fact. 
He who has the gift will see them. Gilliatt, as we have 
said, was a dreamer. He had at times the faculty of a 
seer. It was not in vain that he had spent his days in 
musing among solitary places. 

He imagined himself the dupe of one of those mirages 
which he had more than once beheld when in his dreamy 
moods. 

The opening was somewhat in the shape of a chalk- 
burner's oven. It was a low niche with projections like 
basket-handles. Its abrupt groins contracted gradually 
as far as the extremity of the crypt, where the heaps of 
round stones and the rocky roof joined. 

Gilliatt entered, and lowering his head, advanced to- 
wards the object in the distance. 

There was indeed something smiling. 

It was a death’s head ; but it was not only the head. 
There was the entire skeleton. A complete human skele- 
ton was lying in the cavern. 

In such a position a bold man will continue his re- 
searches. 

Gilliatt cast his eyes around. He was surrounded by 
a multitude of crabs. The multitude did not stir. They 
were but empty shells. 

These groups were scattered here and there among the 
masses of pebbles in irregular constellations. 

Gilliatt, having his eyes fixed elsewhere, had walked 
among them without perceiving them. 

At this extremity of the cr5^t, where he had now pene- 
trated, there was a still greater heap of remains. It was 
a confused mass of legs, antennae, and mandibles. Claws 
stood wide open ; bony shells lay still under their brist- 
ling prickles ; some reversed showed their livid hollows. 
The heap was like a mtUe of besiegers who had fallen, 
and lay massed together. 

The skeleton was partly buried in this heap. 

Under this confused mass of scales and tentacles the 
eye perceived the cranium with its furrows, the ver- 

13 


386 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


tebrae, the thigh bones, the tibias, and the long-jointed 
finger-bones with their nails. The frame of the ribs was 
filled with crabs. Some heart had once beat there. The 
green mould of the sea had settled round the sockets of 
the eyes. Limpets had left their slime upon the bony 
nostrils. For the rest, there were not in this cave within 
the rocks either seagulls, or weeds, or a breath of air. 
All was still. The teeth grinned. 

The sombre side of laughter is that strange mockery 
of its expression which is peculiar to a human skull. 

This marvellous palace of the deep, inlaid and incrusted 
with all the gems of the sea, had at length revealed and 
told its secret. It was a savage haunt ; the devil-fish 
inhabited it ; it was also a tomb, in which the body of a 
man reposed. 

The skeleton and the creatures around it oscillated 
va^ely in the reflections of the subterranean water 
which trembled upon the roof and wall. The horrible 
multitude of crabs looked as if finishing their repast. 
These Crustacea seemed to be devouring the carcass. 
Nothing could be more strange than the aspect of the 
dead vermin upon their dead prey. 

Gilliatt had beneath his eyes the storehouse of the 
devil-fish. 

It was a dismal sight. The crabs had devoured the 
man ; the devil-fish had devoured the crabs. 

There were no remains of clothing anywhere visible. 
The man must have been seized naked. 

Gilliatt, attentively examining, began to remove the 
shells from the skeleton. What had. this man been ? 
The body was admirably dissected ; it looked as if 
prepared for the study of its anatomy ; all the flesh was 
stripped ; not a muscle remained ; not a bone was miss- 
ing. If Gilliatt had been learned in science he might 
have demonstrated the fact. The periostea, denuded of 
their covering, were white and smooth, as if they had 
been polished. But for some green mould of sea-mosses 
here and there they would have been like ivory. The 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


387 

cartilaginous divisions were delicately inlaid and arranged. 
The tomb sometimes produces this ismal mosaic work. 

The body was, as it were, interred under the heap of 
dead crabs. Gilliatt disinterred it. 

Suddenly he stooped, and examined more closely. 

He had perceived around the vertebral column a sort 
of belt. 

It was a leathern girdle, which had evidently been worn 
buckled upon the waist of the man when alive. 

The leather was moist ; the buckle rusty. 

1 Gilliatt pulled the girdle ; the vertebra of the skeleton 
I resisted, and he was compelled to break through them in 
|f order to remove it. A crust of small shells had begun 
t to form upon it. 

I He felt it, and found a Hard substance within, appar- 
[ ently of square form. It was useless to endeavour to 
I unfasten the buckle, so he cut the leather with his knife. 

I The girdle contained a little iron box and some pieces 

I of gold. Gilliatt counted twenty guineas. 

I The iron box was an old sailor’s tobacco-box, opening 
j and shutting with a spring. It was very tight and rusty. 
I The spring, being completely oxidized, would not work. 

* Once more the knife served Gilliatt in a difficulty. 

I A pressure with the point of the blade caused the lid to 
fly up. 

The box was open. 

There was nothing inside but pieces of paper. 

[ A little roll of very thin sheets, folded in four, was 

I fitted in the bottom of the box. They were damp, but 

not injured. The box, hermetically sealed, had pre- 
served them. Gilliatt unfolded them. 

They were three bank notes of one thousand pounds 
sterling each ; making together seventy-five thousand 
francs. 

Gilliatt folded them again, replaced them in the box, 
taking advantage of the space which remained to add 
the twenty guineas, and then reclosed the box as well 
as he could. 


388 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Next he examined the girdle. 

The leather, which had originally been polished out- 
side, was rough within. Upon this tawny ground some 
letters had been traced in black thick ink. Gilliatt 
deciphered them, and read the words, “ Sieur Clubin.” 


V. 

THE FATAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SIX INCHES AND 
TWO FEET. 

Gilliatt replaced the box in the girdle, and placed the 
girdle in the pocket of his trousers. 

He left the skeleton among the crabs, with the remains 
of the devil-fish beside it. 

While he had been occupied with the devil-fish and 
the skeleton, the rising tide had submerged the entrance 
to the cave. He was only enabled to leave it by plunging 
under the arched entrance. He got through without 
difficulty ; for he knew the entrance well, and was master 
of these g5minastics in the sea. 

It is easy to understand the drama which had taken 
place there during the ten weeks preceding. One monster 
had preyed upon another ; the devil-fish had seized 
Clubin. 

These two embodiments of treachery had met in the 
inexorable darkness. There had been an encoimter at 
the bottom of the sea between these two compounds of 
mystery and watchfulness ; the monster had destroyed 
the man * a horrible fulfilment of justice. 

The crab feeds on carrion, the devil-fish on crabs. 
The devil-fish seizes as it passes any swimming animal 
— an otter, a dog, a man if it can — sucks the blood, and 
leaves the body at the bottom of the water. The crabs 
are the spider-formed scavengers of the sea. Putref5dng 
flesh attracts them ; they crowd round it, devour the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA 389 

body, and are in their turn consumed by the devil-fish. 
Dead creatures disappear in the crab, the crab disappears 
in the pieuvre. Tlus is the law which we have already 
pointed out. 

The devil-fish had laid hold of him, and drowned him. 
Some wave had carried his body into the cave, and 
deposited it at the extremity of the inner cavern, where 
Gilliatt had discovered it. 

He returned searching among the rocks for sea-urchins 
and limpets. He had no desire for crabs ; to have eaten 
them now would have seemed to him like feeding upon 
human flesh. 

For the rest, he thought of nothing but of eating what 
he could before starting. Nothing now interposed to 
prevent his departure. Great tempests are always fol- 
lowed by a calm, which lasts sometimes several days. 
There was, therefore, no danger from the sea. Gilliatt 
had resolved to leave the rocks on the following day. 
It was important, on account of the tide, to keep the 
barrier between the two Douvres during the night ; but 
he intended to remove it at daybreak, to push the sloop 
out to sea, and set sail for St. Sampson. The light breeze 
which was blowing came from the south-west, which was 
precisely the wind which he would want. 

It was in the first quarter of the moon, in the month 
of May ; the days were long. 

When Gilliatt, having finished his wanderings among 
the rocks, and appeased his appetite to some extent, 
returned to the passage between the two Douvres, where 
he had left the sloop, the sun had set, the twilight was 
increased by that pale light which comes from a crescent 
moon ; the tide had attained its height, and was begin- 
ning to ebb. The funnel standing upright above the 
sloop had been covered by the foam during the tempest 
with a coating of salt which glittered white in the light of 
the moon. 

This circumstance reminded Gilliatt that the storm had 
inundated the sloop, both with surf and rain-water, and 


390 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


that if he meant to start in the morning it would be neces- 
sary to bail it out. 

Before leaving to go in quest of crabs, he had ascer- 
tained that it had about six inches of water in the hold. 
The scoop which he used for the purpose would, he 
thought, be sufficient for throwing the water overboard. 

On arriving at the barrier Gdliatt was struck with 
terror. There were nearly two feet of water in the sloop. 
A terrible discovery : the bark had sprung a leak. 

She had been making water gradually during his 
absence. Burdened as she was, two feet of water was 
a perilous addition. A little more, and she must inevi- 
tably founder. If he had returned but an hour later, he 
would probably have found nothing above water but the 
funnel and the mast. 

There was not a minute to be lost in deliberation. It 
was absolutely necessary to find the leakage, stop it, and 
then empty the vessel, or at all events lighten it. The 
pumps of the Durande had been lost in the break-up of 
the wreck. He was reduced to use the scoop of the bark. 

To find the leak was the most urgent necessity. 

Gilliatt set to work immediately, and without even 
giving himself time to dress. He shivered ; but he no 
longer felt either hunger or cold. 

The water continued to gain upon his vessel. For- 
tunately there was no wind. The slightest swell would 
have been fatal. 

The moon went down. 

Bent low, and plunged in the water deeper than his 
waist, he groped about for a long time. He discovered 
the niischief at last. 

During the gale, at the critical moment when the sloop 
had swerved, the strong bark had bumped and grazed 
rather violently on the rocks. One of the projections 
of the Little Douvre had made a fracture in the star- 
board side of the hull. 

The leak unluckily — ^it might almost have been said 
maliciously — ^had been made near the joint of the two 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


391 

riders ; a fact whicli, joined with the fury of the hurri- 
cane, had prevented him perceiving it during his dark 
and rapid survey in the height of the storm. 

The fracture was alarming on account of its size ; but 
fortunately, although the vessel was sunk lower than usual 
by the weight of water, it was still above the ordinary 
water-line. 

At the moment when the accident had occurred the 
waves had rolled heavily into the defile^ and had flooded 
through the breach ; and the vessel had simk a few inches 
under the additional weight, so that, even after the sub- 
sidence of the water, the weight having raised the water- 
line, had kept the hole still under the surface. Hence 
the imminence of the danger. But if he could succeed 
in stopping the leak, he could empty the sloop ; the hole 
once stanched, the vessel would rise to its usual water- 
line, the fracture would be above water, and in this posi- 
tion the repair would be easy, or at least possible. He 
had still, as we have already said, his carpenters' tools in 
good condition. 

But meanwhile what imcertainty must he not endure ! 
What perils, what chances of accidents ! He heard the 
water rising inexorably. One shock, and all would have 
perished. What misery seemed in store for him ! Per- 
haps his endeavours were even now too late. 

He reproached himself bitterly. He thought that he 
ought to have seen the damage immediately. The six 
inches of water in the hold ought to have suggested it to 
him. He had been stupid enough to attribute these six 
inches of water to the rain and the foam. He was angry 
with himself for having slept and eaten ; he taxed him- 
self even with his weariness, and almost with the storm 
and the dark night. All seemed to him to have been his 
own fault. 

These bitter self-reproaches filled his mind while 
engaged in his labour, but they did not prevent his 
considering well the work he was engaged in. 

The leak had been found — that was the first step ; to 


392 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


stanch it was the second. That was all that was pos- 
sible for the moment. Joinery work cannot be carried on 
under water. 

It was a favourable circumstance that the breach in the 
hull was in the space between the two chains whidh held 
the funnel fast on the starboard side. The stuffing with 
which it was necessary to stop it could be fixed to these 
chains. 

The water meanwhile was gaining. Its depth was 
now between two and three feet, and it reached above 
his knees. 


VI. 

DE PROFUNDIS AD ALTUM. 

Gilliatt had to his hand among his reserve of rigging 
for the sloop a pretty large tarpaulin, furnished with 
long lanyards at the four corners. 

He took this tarpaulin, made fast the two corners by 
the lanyards to the two rings of the chains of the funnel 
on the same side as the leak, and threw it over the gun- 
wale. The tarpaulin hung like a sheet between the Little 
Douvre and the bark, and sunk in the water. The 
pressure of the water endeavouring to enter into the hold 
kept it close to the huU upon the gap. The heavier the 
pressure the closer the sail adhered. It was stuck by 
the water itself right upon the fracture. The wound 
of the bark was stanched. 

The tarred canvas formed sm effectual barrier between 
the interior of the hold and the waves without. Not a 
drop of water entered. The leak was masked, but was 
not stopped. It was a respite only. 

Gilliatt took the scoop and began to bail the sloop. 
It was time that she were lightened. The labour warmed 
him a little, but his weariness was extreme. He was 
forced to acknowledge to himself that he could not com- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


393 


plete the work of stanching the hold. He had scarcely 
eaten anything, and he had the humiliation of feeling 
himself exhausted. 

He measured the progress of his work by the sinking 
of the level of water below his knees. The fall was slow. 

Moreover, the leakage was only interrupted ; the evil 
was moderated, not repaired. The tarpaulin pushed into 
the gap began to bulge inside, looking as if a fist were 
under the canvas, endeavouring to force it through. 
The canvas, strong and pitchy, resisted ; but the swell- 
ing and the tension increased ; it was not certain that 
it would not give way, and at any moment the swelling 
might become a rent. The irruption of water must then 
recommence. 

In such a case, as the crews of vessels in distress know 
well, there is no other remedy than stuffing. The sailors 
take rags of every kind which they can find at hand — 
everything, in fact, which in their language is called 

service ; and with this they push the bulging sail- 
cloth as far as they can into the leak. 

Of this “ service ” Gilliatt had none. All the rags 
and tow which he had stored up had been used in his 
operations or carried away by the storm. 

If necessary, he might possibly have been able to find 
some remains by searching among the rocks. The sloop 
was sufficiently lightened for him to leave it with safety 
for a quarter of an hour ; but how could he make this 
search without a light ? The darkness was complete. 
There was no longer any moon ; nothing but the starry 
sky. He had no dry tow with which to make a match, 
no tallow to make a candle, no fire to light one, no lan- 
tern to shelter it from the wind. In the sloop and 
among the rocks all was confused and indistinct. He 
could hear the water lapping against the wounded hull, 
but he could not even see the crack. It was with his 
hands that he had ascertained the bulging of the tar- 
paulin. In that darkness it was impossible to make 
any useful search for rags of canvas or pieces of tow 


394 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


scattered among the breakers. Who could glean these 
waifs and strays without being able to see his path ? 
Gilliatt looked sorrowfully at the sky ; all those stars, 
he thought, and yet no light ! 

The water in the bark having diminished, the pressure 
from without increased. The bulging of the canvas 
became larger, and was still increasing, like a frightful 
abscess ready to burst. The situation, which had been 
improved for a short time, began to be threatening. 

Some means of stopping it effectually was absolutely 
necessary. He had nothing left but his clothes, which 
he had stretched to dry upon the projecting rocks of the 
Little Douvre. 

He hastened to fetch them, and placed them upon 
the gunwale of the sloop. 

Then he took his tarpaulin overcoat, and kneeling in 
the water, thrust it into the crevice, and pushing the 
swelling of the sail outward, emptied it of water. To 
the tarpaulin coat he added the sheepskin, then his 
Guernsey shirt, and then his jacket. The hole received 
them all. He had nothing left but his sailor’s trousers, 
which he took off and pushed in with the other articles. 
This enlarged and strengthened the stuffing. 

The stopper was made, and it appeared to be sufficient. 

These clothes passed partly through the gap, the sail- 
cloth outside enveloping them. The sea making an 
effort to enter, pressed against the obstacle, spread it 
over the gap, and blocked it. It was a sort of exterior 
compression. 

Inside, the centre only of the bulging having been 
driven out, there remained all around the gap and the 
stuffing just thrust through a sort of circular pad formed 
by the tarpaulin, which was rendered still firmer by the 
irregularities of the fracture with which it had become 
entangled. 

The leak was stanched, but nothing could be more 
precarious. Those sharp splinters of the gap which 
fixed the tarpaulin might pierce it and make holes, by 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 395 

which the water would enter ; while he would not even 
perceive it in the darkness. There was little probability 
of the stoppage lasting until daylight. Gilliatt’s anxiety 
changed its form ; but he felt it increasing at the same 
time that he found his strength leaving him. 

He had again set to work to bail out the hold, but 
his arms, in spite of all his efforts, could scarcely lift a 
scoopful of water. He was naked and shivering. He 
felt as if the end were now at hand. 

One possible chance flashed across his mind. There 
might be a sail in sight. A fishing^boat which should 
by any accident be in the neighbourhood of the Douvres 
might come to his assistance. The moment had arrived 
when a helpmate was absolutely necessary. With a 
man and a lantern all might yet be saved. If there were 
two persons, one might easily bail the vesseL Since the 
leak was temporarily stanched, as soon as she could be 
relieved of this burden she would rise and regain her 
ordinary water-line. The leak would then be above the 
surface of the water, the repairs would be practicable, 
and he would be able immediately to replace the stuff 
by a piece of planking, and thus substitute for the tem- 
porary stoppage a complete repair. If not, it would be 
necessary to wait till daylight — to wait the whole night 
long ; a delay which might prove ruinous. If by chance 
some ship’s lantern should be in sight, Gilliatt would be 
able to signal it from the height of the Great Douvre. 
The weather was calm, there was no wind or rolling 
sea ; there was a possibility of the figure of a man being 
observed moving against the background of the starry 
sky. A captain of a ship, or even the master of a fish- 
ing-boat, would not be at night in the waters of the 
Douvres without directing his glass upon the rock* by 
way of precaution. 

Gilliatt hoped that some one might perceive him. 

He climbed upon the wreck, grasped the knotted rope, 
and mounted upon the Great Douvre. 

Not a sail was visible around the horizon ; not a 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


396 

boat’s lantern. The wide expanse, as far as eye could 
reach, was a desert. No assistance was possible, and no 
resistance possible. 

Gilliatt felt himself without resources — a feeling which 
he had not felt until then. 

A dark fatality was now his master. With all his 
labour, all his success, all his courage, he and his bark, 
and its precious burden, were about to become the sport 
of the waves. He had no other means of continuing 
the struggle ; he became listless. How could he prevent 
the tide from returning, the water from rising, the night 
from continuing ? The temporary stoppage which he 
had made was his sole reliance. He had exhausted and 
stripped himself in constructing and completing it ; he 
could neither fortify nor add to it. The stop-gap was 
such that it must remain as it was ; and every further 
effort was useless. The apparatus, hastily constructed, 
was at the mercy of the waves. How would this inert 
obstacle work ? It was this obstacle now, not Gilliatt, 
which had to sustain the combat ; that handful of rags, 
not that intelligence. The swell of a wave would suffice 
to reopen the fracture. More or less of pressure — the 
whole question was comprised in that formula. 

All depended upon a brute struggle between two 
mechanical quantities. Henceforth he could neither aid 
his auxiliary nor stop his enemy. He was no longer 
any other than a mere spectator of this struggle, which 
was one for him of life or death. He who had ruled 
over it, a supreme intelligence, was at the last moment 
compelled to resign all to a mere blind resistance. 

No trial, no terror that he had yet undergone, could 
bear comparison with this. 

From the time when he had taken up his abode upon 
the Douvres he had found himself environed, and as 
it were possessed by solitude. This solitude more than 
surrounded, it enveloped him. A thousand menaces at 
once had met him face to face. The wind was always 
there, ready to become furious ; the sea, ready to roar. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


397 


There was no stopping that terrible mouth the wind, no 
imprisoning that dread monster the sea. And yet he 
had striven ; he, a solitary man, had combated hand to 
hand with the ocean, had wrestled even with the tempest. 

Many other anxieties, many other necessities had he 
made head against. There was no form of distress with 
which he had not become familiar. He had been com- 
pelled to execute great works without tools, to move 
vast burdens without aid, without science to resolve 
problems, without provisions to find food, without bed 
or roof to cover it to find shelter and sleep. 

Upon that solitary rock he had been subjected by turns 
to aU the varied and cruel tortures of nature ; oftentimes 
a gentle mother, not less often a pitiless destroyer. 

He had conquered his isolation, conquered hunger, 
conquered thirst, conquered cold, conquered fever, con- 
quered labour, conquered sleep. He had encountered 
a mighty coalition of obstacles formed to bar his progress. 
After his privations there were the elements ; after the 
sea the tempest, after the tempest the devil-fish, after 
the monster the spectre. 

A dismal irony was then the end of all. Upon this 
rock, whence he had thought to arise triumphant, the 
spectre of Clubin had only arisen to mock him with a 
hideous smile. 

The grin of the spectre was well foimded. Gilliatt 
saw himself ruined ; saw himself no less than Clubin 
in the grasp of death. 

Winter, famine, fatigue, the dismemberment of the 
wreck, the removal of the machinery, the equinoctial 
gale, the thunder, the monster, were all as nothing 
compared with this small fracture in a vessel’s planks. 
Against the cold one could procure — and he had pro- 
cured — ^fire ; against hunger the shellfish of the rocks ; 
against thirst, the rain ; against the difficulties of his 
great task, industry and energy ; against the sea and the 
storm, the breakwater ; against the devil-fish, the knife ; 
but against the terrible le^ he had no weapon. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


398 

The hurricane had bequeathed him this sinister fare- 
well. The last struggle, the traitorous thrust, the 
treacherous side -blow of the vanquished foe. In its 
flight the tempest had turned and shot this arrow in the 
rear. It was the final and deadly stab of his antagonist. 

It was possible to combat with the tempest, but how 
could he struggle with that insidious enemy who now 
attacked him ? 

If the stoppage gave way, if the leak reopened, nothing 
could prevent the sloop foundering. It would be the 
bursting of the ligature of the artery ; and once under 
the water with its heavy burden, no power could raise 
it. The noble struggle, with two months* Titanic labour, 
ended then in annihilation. To recommence would be 
impossible. He had neither forge nor materials. At 
daylight, in all probability, he was about to see all his 
work sink slowly and irrecoverably into the gulf. Ter- 
rible, to feel that sombre power beneath. The sea 
snatched his prize from his hands. 

With his bark engulfed, no fate awaited him but to 
perish of hunger and cold, like the poor shipwrecked 
sailor on ** The Man ** rock. 

During two long months the intelligences which hover 
invisibly over the world had been the spectators of these 
things : on one hand the wdde expanse, the waves, the 
winds, the lightnings, the meteors ; on the other a man. 
On one hand the sea, on the other a human mind ; on 
the one hand the infinite, on the other an atom. 

The battle had been fierce,, aiid behold the abortive 
issue of those prodigies of valour. 

Thus did this heroism without parallel end in power- 
lessness ; thus ended in despair that formidable struggle — 
that struggle of a nothing against all, that Iliad against 
one. 

Gilliatt gazed wildly into space. 

He had no clothing. He stood naked in the midst of 
that immensity. 

Then overwhelmed by the sense of that unknown 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


399 


infinity, like one bewildered by a strange persecution, 
confronting the shadows of night, in the presence of 
that impenetrable darkness, in the midst of the murmur 
of the waves, the swell, the foam, the breeze, under the 
clouds, under that vast diffusion of force, under that 
mysterious firmament of wings, of stars, of gulfs, having 
around him and beneath him the ocean, above him the 
constellations, under the great unfathomable deep, he 
sank, gave up the struggle, lay down upon the rock, his 
face towards the stars, humbled, and uplifting his joined 
hands towards the terrible depths^ he cried aloud, Have 
mercy.” 

Weighed down to earth by that immensity, he prayed. 

He was there alone, in the darkness upon the rock, in 
the midst of that sea, stricken down with exhaustion like 
one smitten by lightning, naked like the gladiator in 
the circus, save that for circus he had the vast horizon, 
instead of wild beasts the shadows of darkness, instead 
of the faces of the crowd the eyes of the Unknown, 
instead of the Vestals the stars, instead of Caesar the 
All-powerful. 

His whole being seemed to dissolve in cold, fatigue, 
powerlessness, prayer, and darkness, and his eyes closed. 


VII. 

THE APPEAL IS HEARD. 

Some hours passed. 

The sun rose in an unclouded sky. 

Its first ray shone upon a motionless form upon the 
Great Douvre. It was Gilliatt, 

He was still outstretched upon the rock. 

He was naked, cold, and stiff ; but he did not shiver. 
His closed eyelids were wan. It would have been diffi- 


400 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


cult for a beholder to say whether the form before him 
was not a corpse. 

The sun seemed to look upon him. 

If he were not dead, he was already so near death that 
the slightest cold wind would have sufficed to extinguish 
life. 

The wind began to breathe, warm and animating : it 
was the opening breath of May. 

Meanwhile the sun ascended in the deep blue sky ; 
its rays, less horizontal, flushed the sky. Its light be- 
came warmth. It enveloped the slumbering form. 

Gilliatt moved not. If he breathed, it was only that 
feeble respiration which could scarcely tarnish the sur- 
face of a mirror. 

The sun continued its ascent, its rays striking less 
and less obliquely upon the naked man. The gentle 
breeze which had been merely tepid became hot. 

The rigid and naked body remained still without move- 
ment ; but the skin seemed less livid. 

The sun, approaching the zenith, shone almost per- 
pendicularly upon the plateau of the Douvres. A flood 
of light descended from the heavens ; the vast reflection 
from the glassy sea increased its splendour ; the rock 
itself imbibed the rays and warmed the sleeper. 

A sigh raised his breast. 

He lived. 

The sun continued its gentle offices. The wind, which 
was already the breath of summer and of noon, approached 
him like loving lips that breathed upon him softly. 

Gilliatt moved. 

The peaceful calm upon the sea was perfect. Its 
murmur was like the droning of the nurse beside the sleep- 
ing infant. The rock seemed cradled in the waves. 

The sea-birds, who knew that form, fluttered above it ; 
not with their old wild astonishment, but with a sort of 
fraternal tenderness. They uttered plaintive cries : they 
seemed to be calling to him. A seamew, who no doubt 
knew him, was tame enough to come near him. It began 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


401 


to caw as if speaking to him. The sleeper seemed not 
to hear. The bird hopped upon his shoulder, and pecked 
his lip softly. 

Gilhatt opened his eyes. 

The birds dispersed, chattering wildly. 

Gilliatt arose, stretched himself like a roused lion, ran 
to the edge of the platform, and looked down into the 
space between the two Douvres. 

The sloop was there, intact : the stoppage had held 
out ; the sea had probably disturbed it but little. 

All was saved. 

He was no longer weary. His powers had returned. 
His swoon had ended in a deep sleep. 

He descended and bailed out the sloop, emptied the 
hold, raised the leakage above the water-line, dressed 
himself, ate, drank some water, and was joyful. 

The gap in the side of his vessel, examined in broad 
daylight, proved to require more labour than he had 
thought. It was a serious fracture. The entire day 
was not too much for its repair. 

At daybreak on the morrow, after removing the barrier 
and reopening the entrance to the defile, dressed in the 
tattered clothing which had served to stop the leak, hav- 
ing about him Clubin’s girdle and the seventy-five thou- 
sand francs, standing erect in the sloop, now repaired, 
by the side of the machinery which he had rescued, with 
a favourable breeze and a good sea, Gilliatt pushed off 
from the Douvres. 

He put the sloop’s head for Guernsey. 

At the moment of his departure from the rocks, any one 
who had been there might have heard him singing, in an 
undertone, the air of “ Bonnie Dundee.” 






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BOOK 1.— NIGHT AND THE MOON. 


I. 

THE HARBOUR CLOCK. 

The St. Sampson of the present day is almost a city ; 
the St. Sampson of forty years since was almost a village. 

When the winter evenings were ended and spring had 
come, the inhabitants were not long out of bed after sun- 
down. St. Sampson was an ancient parish which had 
long been accustomed to the sound of the curfew-bell, 
and which had a traditional habit of blowing out the 
candle at an early hour. Those old Norman villages 
are famous for early roosting, and the villagers are gen- 
erally great rearers of poultry. 

The people of St. Sampson, except a few rich families 
among the townsfolk, are also a population of quarriers 
and carpenters. The port is a port of ship-repairing. 
The quarrying of stone and the fashioning of timber go 
on all day long ; here the labourer with the pickaxe, 
there the workman with the mallet. At night they sink 
with fatigue, and sleep like lead. Rude labours bring 
heavy slumbers. 

One evening, in the commencement of the month of 
May, after watching the crescent moon for some instants 
through the trees, and listening to the step of Deruchette 
walking alone in the cool air in the garden of the Bravees, 
Mess Lethierry had returned to his room looking on the 


4o6 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


harbour, and had retired to rest ; Douce and Grace were 
already abed. Except Deruchette, the whole household 
were sleeping. Doors and shutters were everywhere 
closed. Footsteps were silent in the streets. Some few 
lights, like winking eyes about to close in rest, showed 
here and there in windows in the roofs, indicating the 
hour of domestics going to bed. Nine had already struck 
in the old Romanesque belfry, surrounded by ivy, which 
shares with the church of St. Brelade at Jersey the pecul- 
iarity of having for its date four ones (IIII), which are 
used to signify eleven hundred and eleven. 

The popularity of Mess Lethierry at St. Sampson had 
been founded on his success. The success at an end, 
there had come a void. It might be imagined that ill- 
fortune is contagious, and that the unsuccessful have a 
plague, so rapidly are they put in quarantine. The 
young men of well-to-do families avoided Deruchette. 
The isolation around the Brav^es was so complete that 
its inmates had not even yet heard the news of the great 
local event which had that day set all St. Sampson in a 
ferment. The rector of the parish, the Rev. Ebenezer 
Caudray, had become rich. His uncle, the magnificent 
Dean of St. Asaph, had just died in London. The news 
had been brought by the mail sloop, the Cashmere, 
arrived from England that very morning, and the mast 
of which could be perceived in the roads of St. Peter’s 
Port. The Cashmere was to depsirt for Southampton 
at noon on the morrow, and, so tlxe rumour ran, to con- 
vey the reverend gentleman, who had been suddenly 
summoned to England, to be present at the official open- 
ing of the will, not to speak of other urgent matters 
connected with an important inheritance. All day long 
St. Sampson had been conversing on this subject. 
The Cashmere, the Rev. Ebenezer, his deceased uncle, his 
riches, his departure, his possible preferment in the 
future, had formed the foundations of that perpetual 
buzzing. A solitary house, ftill uninformed on these 
matters, had remained at peace. This was the Brav^es. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


407 


Mess Lethierry had jumped into his hammock, and lay 
down in his clothing. 

Since the catastrophe of the Durande, to get into his 
hammock had been his resource. Every captive has 
recourse to stretching himself upon his pallet, and Mess 
Lethierry was the captive of his grief. To go to bed was 
a truce, a gain in breathing-time, a suspension of ideas. 
He neither slept nor watched. Strictly speaking, for 
two months and a half — for so long was it since his 
misfortune — Mess Lethierry had been in a sort of som- 
nambulism. He had not yet regained possession of his 
faculties. He was in that cloudy and confused condition 
of intellect with which those are familiar who have under- 
gone overwhelming afflictions. His reflections were not 
thought, his sleep was no repose. By day he was not 
awake, by night not asleep. He was up, and then gone 
to rest, that was all. When he was in his hammock for- 
getfulness came to him a little. He called that sleeping. 
Chimeras floated about him and within him. The noc- 
turnal cloud, full of confused faces, traversed his brain. 
Sometimes it was the Emperor Napoleon dictating to 
him the story of his life ; sometimes there were several 
D4ruchettes ; ’ strange birds were in the trees ; the streets 
of Lons-le-Saulnier became serpents. Nightmares were 
the brief respites of despair. He passed his nights in 
dreaming and his days in reverie. 

Sometimes he remained all the afternoon at the window 
of his room, which looked out upon the port, with his 
head drooping, his elbows on the stone, his ears resting 
on his fists, his back turned to the whole world, his eye 
fixed on the old massive iron ring fastened in the wall of 
the house, at only a few feet from his window, where in 
the old days he used to moor the Durande. He was 
looking at the rust which gathered on the ring. 

He was reduced to the mere mechanical habit of living. 

The bravest men, when deprived of their most cher- 
ished idea, will come to this. His life had become a 
void. Life is a voyage ; the idea is the itinerary. The 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


408 

plan of their course gone, they stop. The object is lost, 
the strength of purpose gone. Fate has a secret discre- 
tionary power. It is able to touch with its rod even our 
moral being. Despair is almost the destitution of the 
soul. Only the greatest minds resist, and for what ? 

Mess Lethierry was always meditating, if absorption 
can be called meditation, in the depth of a sort of cloudy 
abyss. Broken words sometimes escaped him like these : 
“ There is nothing left for me now but to ask yonder for 
leave to go.” 

There was a certain contradiction in that nature, com- 
plex as the sea, of which Mess Lethierry was, so to speak, 
the product. Mess Lethierry’s grief did not seek relief 
in prayer. 

To be powerless is a certain stren^h. In the presence 
of our two great expressions of this blindness-destiny 
and nature — it is in his powerlessness that man has found 
his chief support in prayer. 

Man seeks succour from his terror; his anxiety bids 
him kneel. 

But Mess Lethierry prayed not. 

In the time when he was happy, God existed for him 
almost in visible contact. Lethierry addressed Him, 
pledged his word to Him, seemed at times to hold fa- 
miliar intercourse with Him. But in the hour of his mis- 
fortune — a phenomenon not unfrequent — the idea of God 
had become eclipsed in his mind. This happens when 
the mind has created for itself a deity clothed with human 
qualities. 

In the state of mind in which he existed, there was for 
Lethierry only one clear vision — ^the smile of Deruchette. 
Beyond this all was dark. 

For some time, apparently on account of the loss of 
the Durande, and of the blow which it had been to them, 
this pleasant smile had been rare. She seemed always 
thoughtful. Her birdlike playfulness, her childlike ways, 
were gone. She was never seen now in the morning at 
the sound of the cannon which announced daybreak, 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


409 


saluting the rising sun with ** Boom ! Daylight ! Come 
in, please ! At times her expression was very serious, 
a sad thing for that sweet nature. She made an effort, 
however, sometimes to laugh before Mess Lethierry and 
to divert him ; but her cheerfulness grew tarnished from 
day to day — gathered dust like the wing of a butterfly 
with a pin through its body. Whether through sorrow 
for her uncle’s sorrow — for there are griefs which are the 
reflections of other griefs — or whether for any other 
reasons, she appeared at this time to be much inclined 
towards religion. In the time of the old rector, M. 
Jaquemin Herode, she scarcely went to church, as has 
been already said, four times a year. Now she was, on 
the contrary, assiduous in her attendance. She missed 
no service, neither of Sunday nor of Thursday. Pious 
souls in the parish remarked with satisfaction that amend- 
ment. For it is a great blessing when a girl who runs so 
many dangers in the world turns her thoughts towards 
God. That enables the poor parents at least to be easy 
on the subject of love-making and what not. 

In the evening, whenever the weather permitted, she 
walked for an hour or two in the garden of the Bravees. 
She was almost as pensive there as Mess Lethierry, and 
almost always alone. Deruchette went to bed last. 
This, however, did not prevent Douce and Grace watching 
her a little, by that instinct for spying which is common 
to servants ; spying is such a relaxation after household 
work. 

As to Miss Lethierry, in the abstracted state of his 
mind, these little changes in D4ruchette’s habits escaped 
him. Moreover, his nature had little in common with 
the Duenna. He had not even remarked her regularity at 
the church. Tenacious of his prejudices against the clergy 
and their sermons, he would have seen with little pleasure 
these frequent attendances at the parish church. It was 
not because his own moral condition was not undergoing 
change. Sorrow is a cloud which changes fom. 

Robust natures, as we have said, are sometimes almost 


416 THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 

overthrown by sudden great misfortunes ; but not quite. 
Manly characters such as Lethierry^s experience a reac- 
tion in a given time. Despair has its backward stages. 
From overwhelment we rise to dejection ; from dejec- 
tion to affliction ; from affliction to melancholy. Melan- 
choly is a twilight state; suffering melts into it and 
becomes a sombre joy. Melancholy is the pleasure of 
being sad. 

These elegiac moods were not made for Lethierry. 
Neither the nature of his temperament nor the character 
of his misfortune suited those delicate shades. But at 
the moment at which we have returned to him, the reverie 
of his first despair had for more than a week been tend- 
ing to disperse, without, however, leaving him less sad. 
He was more inactive, was always dull ; but he was no 
longer overwhelmed. A certain perception of events 
and circumstances was returning to him, and he began 
to experience something of that phenomenon which may 
be called the return to reality. 

Thus by day in the great lower room he did not listen 
to the words of those about him, but he heard them. 
Grace came one morning quite triumphant to tell D6ru- 
chette that he had imdone the cover of a newspaper. 

This half-acceptance of realities is in itself a good symp- 
tom, a token of convalescence. Great afflictions pro- 
duce a stupor ; it is by such little acts that men return 
to themselves. This improvement, however, is at first 
only an aggravation of the evil. The dreamy condition 
of mind in which the sufferer has lived has served, while 
it lasted, to blunt his grief. His sight before was thick. 
He felt little. Now his view is clear, nothing escapes 
him ; ^ and his wounds reopen. Each detail that he 
perceives serves to remind him of his sorrow. He sees 
everything again in memory; every remembrance is a 
regret. All kinds of bitter aftertastes lurk in that return 
to fife. He is better, and yet worse. Such was the con- 
dition of Lethierry. In returning to full consciousness 
his sufferings had become more distinct. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 411 

A sudden shock first recalled him to a sense of reality. 

One afternoon, between the 15th and 20th of April, a 
double knock at the door of the great lower room of the 
Brav^es had signalled the arrival of the postman. Douce 
had opened the door ; there was a letter. 

The letter came from beyond sea ; it was addressed to 
Mess Lethierry, and bore the postmark ** Lisboa.” 

Douce had taken the letter to Mess Lethierry, who was 
in his room. He had taken it, placed it mechanically 
upon the table, and had not looked at it. 

The letter remained an entire week upon the table 
without being unsealed. 

It happened, however, one morning, that Douce said 
to Mess Lethierry, — 

“ Shall I brush the dust off your letter, sir ? ” 

Lethierry seemed to arouse from his lethargy. 

“ Ay, ay ! You are right,”- he said ; and he opened 
the letter, and read as follows, — 

*• At Sea, xoth March. 

“ To Mess Lethierry of St. Sampson. 

You will be gratified to receive news of me. I am 
aboard the TamauUpaSy bound for the port of ” No- 
retum.” Among the crew is a sailor named Ahier- 
Tostevin, from Guernsey, who will return and will have 
some facts to communicate to you. I take the oppor- 
tunity of our speaking a vessel, the Herman Cortes^ 
bound for Lisbon, to forward you this letter. 

“You will be astonished to learn that I am going to 
be honest. 

“ As honest as Sieur Clubin. 

“ I am bound to believe that you know of certain 
recent occurrences ; nevertheless, it is, perhaps, not alto-- 
gether superfluous to send you a full account of them. 

“ To proceed, then. 

“ I have returned you your money. 

“ Some years ago I borrowed from you, under some- 
what irregular circumstances, the sum of fifty thousand 


412 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


francs. Before leaving St. Malo lately, I placed in the 
hands of your confidential man of business, Sieur Clubin, 
on your account, three bank-notes of one thousand pounds 
each ; making together seventy-five thousand francs. 
You will no doubt find this reimbursement sufficient. 

“ Sieur Clubin acted for you, and received your money, 
including interest, in a remarkably energetic manner. 
He appeared to me, indeed, singularly zealous. This 
is, in fact, my reason for apprising you of the facts. 

“ Your other confidential man of business, 

'' Rantaine. 

“ Postscript . — Sieur Clubin was in possession of a 
revolver, which will explain to you the circumstance 
of my having no receipt.^* 

He who has ever touched a torpedo, or a Leyden- jar 
fully charged, may have a notion of the effect produced 
on Mess Lethierry by the reading of this letter. 

Under that envelope, in that sheet of paper folded in 
four, to which he had at first paid so little attention, lay 
the elements of an extraordinary commotion. 

He recognized the writing and the signature. As to 
the facts which the letter contained, at first he under- 
stood nothing. 

The excitement of the event, however, soon gave 
movement to his faculties. 

The effective part of the shock he had received lay in 
the phenomenon of the seventy-five thousand francs 
entrusted by Rantaine to Clubin ; this was a riddle 
which compelled Lethierry’s brain to work. Conjec- 
ture is a healthy occupation for the mind. Reason is 
awakened ; logic is called into play. 

For some time past public opinion in Guernsey had 
been undergoing a reaction on the subject of Clubin — 
that man of such high reputation for honour during 
many years ; that man so unanimously regarded with 
esteem. People had begun to question and to doubt ; 
there were wagers pro and con. Some light had been 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


413 


thrown on the question in singular ways. The figure of 
Clubin .began to become clearer — that is to say, he began 
to be blacker in the eyes of the world. 

A judicial inquiiy had taken place at St. Malo for the 
purpose of ascertaining what had become of the coast- 
guardman, number 619. Legal perspicacity had got upon 
a false scent, a thing which happens not unfrequently. 
It had started with the hypothesis that the man had 
been enticed by Zuela, and shipped aboard the Tamau- 
lipas for Chili. This ingenious supposition had led to a 
considerable amount of wasted conjecture. The short- 
sightedness of justice had failed to take note of Ran- 
taine ; but in the progress of inquiry the authorities had 
come opon other clues. The afiair, so obscure, became 
complicated. Clubin had become mixed up with the 
enigma. A coincidence, perhaps a direct connection, 
had been found between the departure of the Tamaulipas 
and the loss of the Durande. At the wine-shop near the 
Dinan Gate, where Clubin thought himself entirely un- 
known, he had been recognized. The wine-shop keeper 
had talked ; Clubin had bought a bottle of brandy that 
night. For whom ? The gunsmith of St. Vincent Street, 
too, had talked. Clubin had purchased a revolver. For 
what object ? The landlord of the “ Jean Auberge ** had 
talked. Clubin had absented himself in an inexplicable 
manner. Captain Gertrais-Gaboureau had talked. Clu- 
bin had determined to start, although warned, and know- 
ing that he might expect a great fog. The crew of the 
Durande had t^ed. In fact, the collection of the freight 
had been neglected, and the stowage badly arranged, a 
negligence easy to comprehend if the captain had deter- 
mined to wreck the ship. The Guernsey passenger, too, 
had spoken. Clubin had evidently imagined that he had 
run upon the Hanways. The Tortevai people had spoken. 
Clubin had visited that neighbourhood a few days before 
the loss of the Durande, and had been seen walking in 
the direction of Pleinmont, near the Hanwa57S, He had 
with him a travelling-bag. '*He had set out with it, 


414 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


and come back without it.” The bird’s-nesters had 
spoken : their story seemed to be possibly connected 
with Clubin*s disappearance, if instead of ghosts they 
supposed smugglers. Finally, the haunted house of 
Pleinmont itself had spoken. Persons *who had deter- 
mined to get information had climbed and entered the 
windows, and had found inside — ^what ? The very trav- 
elling-bag which had been seen in Sieur Clubin’s posses- 
sion. The authorities of the Douzaine of Torteval had 
taken possession of the bag and had it opened. It was 
found to contain provisions, a telescope, a chronometer, 
a man’s clothing, and linen marked with Clubin’s initials. 
All this in the gossip of St. Malo and Guernsey became 
more and more like a case of fraud. Obscure hints were 
brought together ; there appeared to have been a sin- 
gular disregard of advice ; a willingness to encounter 
the dangers of the fog ; a suspected negligence in the 
stowage of the cargo. Then there was the mysterious 
bottle of brandy ; a drunken helmsman ; a substitution 
of the captain for the helmsman ; a management of the 
rudder, to say the least, unskilful. The heroism of re- 
maining behind upon the wreck began to look like roguery. 
Clubin besides had evidently been deceived as to the rock 
he was on. Granted an intention to wreck the vessel, it 
was easy to understand the choice of the Hanways, the 
shore easily reached by swimming, and the intended con- 
cealment in the haunted house awaiting the opportunity 
for flight. The travelling-bag, that suspicious prepara- 
tive, completed the demonstration. By what link this 
affair connected itself with the other affair of the dis- 
appearance of the coastguardman nobody knew. People 
imagined some connection, and that was all. They had 
a glimpse in their minds of the lookoutman, number 
619, alongside of the mysterious Clubin— c^uite a tragic 
drama. Clubin possibly was not an actor m it, but his 
presence was visible in the side scenes. 

The supposition of a wilful destruction of the Durande 
did not explain everything. There was a revolver in the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


415 

story, with no part yet assigned to it. The revolver, 
probably, belonged to the other affair. 

The scent of the public is keen and true. Its instinct 
excels in those discoveries of truth by pieces and frag- 
ments. Still, amidst these facts, which seemed to point 
pretty clearly to a case of barratry, there were serious 
difficulties. 

Everything was consistent, everything coherent; but 
a basis was wanting. 

People do not wreck vessels for the pleasure of wreck- 
ing them. Men do not run aU those risks of fog, rocks, 
swimming, concealment, and flight without an mterest. 
What could have been Gubin’s interest ? 

The act seemed plain, but the motive was puzzling. 

Hence a doubt in many minds. Where there is no 
motive, it is natural to infer that there was no act. 

The missing link was important. The letter from Ran- 
taine seemed to supply it. 

This letter furnished a motive for Gubin’s supposed 
crime : seventy-five thousand francs to be appropriated. 

Rantaine was the Deus ex machina. He had descended 
from the clouds with a lantern in his hand. His letter 
was the final light upon the affair. It explained every- 
thing, and even promised a witness in the person of Ahier- 
Tostevin. 

The part which it at once suggested for the revolver 
was decisive. Rantaine was undoubtedly well in- 
formed. His letter pointed clearly the explanation of 
the mystery. 

There could be no possible palliation of Gubin’s crime. 
He had premeditated the shipwreck ; the proofs were 
the preparations discovered in the haunted house. Even 
supposing him innocent, and admitting the wreck to have 
been accidental, would he not, at the last moment, when 
he had determined to sacrifice himself with the vessel, 
have entrusted the seventy-five thousand francs to the 
men who escaped in the longboat ? The evidence was 
strikingly complete. Now, what had become of Gubin ? 


4i6 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


He had probably been the victim of his blunder. He 
had doubtless perished upon the Douvres. 

All this construction of surmises, which were not far 
from the reality, had for several days occupied the mind 
of Mess Lethierry. The letter from Rantaine had done 
him the service of setting him to think. He was at first 
shaken by his surprise ; then he made an effort to re- 
flect. He made another effort more difficult still, that 
of inquiry. He was induced to listen, and even seek 
conversation. At the end of a week he had become, to 
a certain degree, in the world again ; his thoughts had 
regained their coherence, and he was almost restored. 
He had emerged from his confused and troubled 
state. 

Rantaine's letter, even admitting that Mess Lethieny 
could ever have entertained any hope of the reimburse- 
ment of his money, destroyed that l^t chance. 

It added to the catastrophe of the Durande this new 
wreck of seventy-five thousand francs. It put him in 
possession of that amount just so far as to make him 
sensible of its loss. The letter revealed to him the ex- 
treme point in his ruin. 

Hence he experienced a new and very painful sensa- 
tion, which we have already spoken ot. He began to 
take an interest in his household — what it was to be in 
the future — how he was to set things in order ; matters 
of which he had taken no heed for two months past. 
These trifling cares wounded him with a thousand tiny 
points, worse in their aggregate than the old despair. 
A sorrow is doubly burdensome which has to be endured 
in each item, and while disputing inch by inch with fate 
for grouiid already lost. Ruin is endurable in the mass, 
but not in the dust and fragments of the fallen edifice. 
The great fact may overwhelm, but the details torture. 
The catastrophe which lately fell like a thunderbolt 
becomes now a cruel persecution. Humiliation comes 
to aggravate the blow. A second desolation succeeds 
the first, with features more repulsive. You descend 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


4^7 

one degree nearer to annihilation. The winding-sheet 
becomes changed to sordid rags. 

No thought is more bitter than that of one’s own 
gradual fall from a social position. 

Ruin is simple enough — a violent shock; a cruel 
turn of fate ; a catastrophe once for all. Be it so. We 
submit, and all is over. You are ruined : it is well ; 
you are dead ? No ; you are still living. On the 
morrow you know it weU. By what ? By the pricking 
of a pin. Yonder passer-by omits to recognize you ; 
the tradesmen’s bills rain down upon you ; and yonder 
is one of your enemies, who is smiling. Perhaps he is 
thinking of Arnal’s last pun ; but it is aU the same. 
The pun would not have appeared to him so inimitable 
but for your ruin. You read your own sudden insignifi- 
cance even in looks of indifference. Friends who used 
to dine at your table become of opinion that three courses 
were an extravagance. Your faults are patent to the 
eyes of everybody ; ingratitude having nothing more 
to expect, proclaims itself openly ; every idiot has fore- 
seen your misfortunes. The malignant pull you to 
pieces ; the more malignant profess to pity. And then 
come a hundred paltry details. Nausea succeeds to 
grief. You have been wont to indulge in wine ; you 
must now drink cider. Two servants, too ! Why, one 
will be too many. It will be necessary to discharge this 
one, and get rid of that. Flowers in your garden are 
superfluous ; you will plant it with potatoes. You used 
to make presents of your fruits to friends ; you will 
send them henceforth to market. As to the poor, it 
will be absurd to think of giving anything to them. 
Are you not poor yourself ? And then there is the painful 
question of dress. To have to refuse a wife a new 
ribbon, what a torture ! To have to refuse one who 
has made you a gift of her beauty a trifling article ; to 
h^gle over such matters, like a miser ! Perhaps she 
will say to you, “ What ! rob my garden of its flowers, 
and now refuse one for my bonnet I ” Ah me ! to have 

14 


4i8 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


to condemn her to shabby dresses. The family-table is 
silent. You fancy that those around it think harshly of 
you. Beloved faces have become clouded. This is what 
is meant by falling fortunes. It is to die day by day. 
To be struck down is like the blast of the furnace ; to 
decay like this is the torture of the slow fire. 

An overwhelming blow is a sort of Waterloo ; a slow 
decay, a St. Helena. Destiny, incarnate in the form of 
Wellington, has still some dignity ; but how sordid in 
the shape of Hudson Lowe I Fate becomes then a paltry 
huckster. We find the man of Campo Formio quarrelling 
about a pair of stockings ; we see that dwarfing of 
Napoleon which makes England less. Waterloo and St. 
Helena 1 Reduced to humbler proportions, every ruined 
man has traversed those two phases. 

On the evening we have mentioned, and which was 
one of the first evenings in May, Lethierry, leaving D4ru“ 
chette to walk by moonlight in the garden, had gone to 
bed more depressed than ever. 

AU these mean and repulsive details, peculiar to worldly 
misfortune ; all these trifling cares, which are at first 
insipid, and afterwards harassing, were revolving in his 
mind. A sullen load of miseries ! Mess Lethierry felt 
that his fall was irremediable. What could he do ? 
What would become of them ? What sacrifices should 
he be compelled to impose on Deruchette ? Whom 
should he discharge — Douce or Grace ? Would they 
have to sell the Bravees ? Would they not be compelled 
to leave the island ? To be nothing where he had been 
ever 3 rthing ; it was a terrible fall indeed. 

And to know that the old times had gone for ever ! 
To recall those journeys to and fro, uniting France with 
those numberless islands ; the Tuesday’s departure, the 
Friday’s return, the crowd on the quay, those great 
cargoes, that industry, that prosperity, that proud direct 
navigation, that machinery embodying the wiU of man, 
that all-powerful boiler, that smoke, all that reality ! 
The steamboat had been the final crown of the compass ; 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


419 


the needle indicating the direct track, the steam- vessel 
following it. One proposing, the other executing. 
Where was she now, his Durande, that mistress of the 
seas, that queen who had made him a king ? To have 
been so long the man of ideas in his own country, the 
man of success, the man who revolutionized navigation ; 
and then to have to give up all, to abdicate ! To cease 
to exist, to become a byword, an empty bag which once 
was full. To belong to the past, after having so long 
represented the future. To come down to be an object 
of pity to fools, to witness the triumph of routine, obsti- 
nacy, conservatism, selfishness, ignorance. To see the 
old barbarous sailing-cutters crawling to and fro upon 
the sea, the outworn old-world prejudices young again ; 
to have wasted a whole life ; to have been a light, and 
to suffer this eclipse. Ah ! what a sight it was upon 
the waves, that noble funnel, that prodigious cylinder, 
that pillar with its capital of smoke, that column grander 
than any in the Place Vend6me, for on that there was 
only a man, while on this stood Progress. The ocean 
was subdued ; it was certainty upon the open sea. And 
had all this been witnessed in that little island, in that 
little harbour, in that little town of St. Sampson ? Yes ; 
it had been witnessed. And could it be that, having 
seen it, all had vanished to be seen no more ? 

All this series of regrets tortured Lethierry. There is 
such a thing as a mental sobbing. Never, perhaps, had 
he felt his misfortune more bitterly. A certain numb- 
ness follows this acute suffering. Under the weight of 
his sorrow he gradually dozed. 

For about two hours he remained in this state, feverish, 
sleeping a little, meditating much. Such torpors are 
accompanied by an obscure labour of the brain, which 
is inexpressibly wearying. Towards the middle of the 
night, about midnight, a little before or a little after, 
he shook off his lethargy. He aroused, and opened his 
eyes. His window was directly in front of his hammock. 
He saw something extraordinary. 


420 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


A form was before the window — a marvellous form. 
It was the funnel of a steam- vessel. 

Mess Lethierry started, and sat upright in his bed. 
The hammock oscillated like a swing in a tempest. 
Lethierry stared. A vision filled the window-frame. 
There was the harbour flooded with the light of the 
moon, and against that glitter, quite close to his house, 
stood forth, tall, round, and black, a magnificent object. 

The funnel of a steam-vessel was there. 

Lethierry sprang out of his hammock, ran to the 
window, lifted the sash, leaned out, and recognized it. 

The funnel of the Durande stood before him. 

It was in the old place. 

Its four chains supported it, made fast to the bulwarks 
of a vessel in which, beneath the funnel, he could dis- 
tinguish a dark mass of irregular outline. 

Lethierry recoiled, turned his back to the window, 
and dropped in a sitting posture into his hammock again. 

Then he returned, and once more he saw the vision. 

An instant afterwards, or in about the time occupied 
by a flash of lightning, he was out upon the quay, with 
a lantern in his hand. 

A bark carrying a little backward a massive block 
from which issued the straight funnel before the window 
of the Bravees, was made fast to the mooring-ring of 
the Durande. The bows of the bark stretched beyond 
the comer of the wall of the house, and were level with 
the quay. 

There was no one aboard. 

The vessel was of a peculiar shape. All Guernsey 
would have recognized it. It was the old Dutch sloop. 

Lethieiry jumped aboard, and ran forward to the 
block which he saw beyond the mast. 

It was there, entire, complete, intact, standing square 
and firm upon its cast-iron flooring ; the boiler had all 
its rivets, the axle of the paddle-wheels was raised erect, 
and made fast near the boiler ; the brine-pump was in 
its place ; nothing was wanting. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


421 


Lethierry examined the machinery’. 

The lantern and the moon helped him in his examina- 
tion. He went over every part of the mechanism. 

He noticed the two cases at the sides. He examined 
the axle of the wheels. 

He went into the little cabin ; it was empty. 

He returned to the engine, and felt it, looked into the 
boiler, and knelt down to examine it inside. 

He placed his lantern within the furnace, where the 
light, illuminating all the machinery, produced almost 
the illusion of an engine-room with its fire. 

Then he burst into a wild laugh, sprang to his feet, 
and with his eye fixed on the engine, and his arms out- 
stretched towards the funnel, he cried aloud, “ Help.” 

The harbour bell was upon the quay, at a few paces’ 
distance. He ran to it, seized the chain, and began to 
pull it violently. 


II. 

THE HARBOUR BELL AGAIN. 

Gilliatt, in fact, after a passage without accident, but 
somewhat slow on account of the heavy burden of the 
sloop, had arrived at St. Sampson after dark, and nearer 
ten than nine o’clock. 

He had calculated the time. The half-flood had 
arrived. There was plenty of water, and the moon was 
shining, so that he was able to enter the port. 

The little harbour was silent. A few vessels were 
moored there, with their sails brailed up to the yards, 
their tops over, and without lanterns. At the far end 
a few others were visible, high and dry in the careenage, 
where they were undergoing repairs ; large huUs dis- 
masted and stripped, with their planking open at various 
parts, lifting high the ends of their timbers, and looking 


422 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


like huge dead beetles lying on their backs with their 
legs in the air. 

As soon as he had cleared the harbour mouth, Gilliatt 
examined the port and the quay. There was no light 
to be seen either at the Bravees or elsewhere. The place 
was deserted, save, perhaps, by some one going to or 
returning from the parsonage-house ; nor was it possible 
to be sure even of this, for the night blurred every out- 
line, and the moonlight always gives to objects a vague 
appearance. The distance added to the indistinctness. 
The parsonage -house at that period was situated on the 
other side of the harbour, where there stands at the 
present day an open mast-house. 

Gilliatt had approached the Bravees quietly, and had 
made the sloop fast to the ring of the Durande, under 
Mess Lethierry’s window. 

He leaped over the bulwarks, and was ashore. 

Leaving the sloop behind him by the quay, he turned 
the angle of the house, passed along a little narrow 
street, then along another, did not even notice the path- 
way which branched off leading to the Bii de la Rue, 
and in a few minutes found himself at that comer of the 
wall where there were wild mallows with pink flowers 
in June, with holly, ivy, and nettles. Many a time, con- 
cealed behind the bushes, seated on a stone, in the 
summer days, he had watched here through long hours, 
even for whole months, often tempted to climb the wall 
over which he contemplated the garden of the Brav4es 
and the two windows of a little room seen through the 
branches of the trees. The stone was there still ; the 
bushes, the low wall, the angle, as quiet and dark as 
ever. Like an animal returning to its hole, gliding rather 
than walking, he made his way in. Once seated there, 
he made no movement. He looked around ; saw again 
the garden, the pathways, the beds of flowers, the house, 
the two windows of the chamber. The moonlight fell 
upon this dream. He felt it horrible to be compelled to 
breathe, and did what he could to prevent it. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


423 


He seemed to be gazing on a \dsion of paradise, and 
was afraid that all would vanish. It was almost im- 
possible that all these things could be really before his 
eyes ; and if they were, it could only be with that 
imminent danger of melting into air which belongs to 
things divine. A breath, and all must be dissipated. 
He trembled with the thought. 

Before him, not far off, at the side of one of the alleys 
in the garden, was a wooden seat painted green. The 
reader will remember this seat. 

Gilliatt looked up at the two windows. He thought 
of the slumber of some one possibly in that room. Be- 
hind that wall she was no doubt sleeping. He wished 
himself elsewhere, yet would sooner have died than go 
away. He thought of a gentle breathing moving a 
woman ^s breast. It was she, that vision, that purity in 
the clouds, that form haunting him by day and night. 
She was there ! He thought of her so far removed, and 
yet so near as to be almost within reach of his delight ; 
he thought of that impossible ideal drooping in slumber, 
and like himself, too, visited by visions ; of that being 
so long desired, so distant, so impalpable — ^her closed 
eyelids, her face resting on her hand ; of the mystery of 
sleep in its relations with that pure spirit, of what dreams 
might come to one who was herself a dream. He dared 
not think beyond, and yet he did. He ventured on 
those familiarities which the fancy may indulge in ; the 
notion of how much was feminine in that angelic being 
disturbed bis thoughts. The darkness of night em- 
boldens timid imaginations to take these furtive glances. 
He was vexed within himself, feeling on reflection as if it 
were profanity to think of her so boldly ; yet still con- 
strained, in spite of himself, he tremblingly gazed into the 
invisible. He shuddered almost with a sense of pain as 
he imagined her room, a petticoat on a chair, a mantle 
fallen on the carpet, a band imbuckled, a handkerchief. 
He imagined her corset with its lace hanging to the ground, 
her stockings, her boots. His soul was among the stars. 


424 the toilers OF THE SEA. 

The stars are made for the human heart of a poor 
man like Gilliatt not less than for that of the rich and 
great. There is a certain degree of passion by which 
every man becomes wrapped in a celestial light. With 
a rough and primitive nature, this truth is even more 
applicable. An uncultivated mind is easily touched 
with dreams. 

Delight is a fullness which overflows like any other. 
To see those windows was almost too much happiness 
for Gilliatt. 

Suddenly he looked and saw her. 

From the branches of a clump of bushes, already 
thickened by the spring, there issued with a spectral 
slowness a celestial figure, a dress, a divine face, almost 
a shining light benealli the moon. 

GilHatt felt his powers failing him : it was D6ruchette. 

D^ruchette approached. She stopped. She walked 
back^a few paces, stopped again ; then returned and sat 
upon the wooden bench. The moon was in the trees, 
a few clouds floated among the pale stars ; the sea 
murmured to the shadows in an undertone, the town 
was sleeping, a thin haze was rising from the horizon, 
the melancholy was profound. D4ruchette inclined her 
head, with those thoughtful eyes which look attentive 
yet see nothing. She was seated sideways, and had 
nothing on her head but a little cap untied, which showed 
upon her delicate neck the commencement of her hair. 
She twirled mechanically a ribbon of her cap around 
one of her fingers ; the half light showed the outline oi 
her hands like those of a statue ; her dress was of one 
of those shades which by night looked white : the trees 
stirred as if they felt the enchantment which she shed 
around her. The tip of one of her feet was visible. 
Her lowered eyelids had that vague contraction which 
suggests a tear checked in its course, or a thought sup- 
pressed. There was a charming indecision in the move- 
ments of her arms, which had no support to lean on ; a 
sort of floating mingled with every posture. It was 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


425 


rather a gleam than a light — rather a grace than a 
goddess ; the folds of her dress were exquisite ; her 
face, which might inspire adoration, seemed meditative, 
like portraits of the Virgin. It was terrible to think 
how near she was : Gilliatt could hear her breathe. 

A nightingale was singing in the distance. The stir- 
ring of the wind among the branches set in movement 
the inexpressible silence of the night. D6ruchette, 
beautiful, divine, appeared in the twilight like a creation 
from those rays and from the perfumes in the air. That 
widespread enchantment seemed to concentre and em- 
body itself mysteriously in her ; she became its living 
manifestation. She seemed the out-blossoming of all 
that shadow and silence. 

But the shadow and silence which floated lightly 
about her weighed heavily on Gilliatt. He was be- 
wildered ; what he experienced is not to be told in 
words. Emotion is always new, and the word is always 
enough. Hence the impossibility of expressing it. Joy 
is sometimes overwhelming. To see Deruchette, to see 
her herself, to see her dress, her cap, her ribbon, which 
she twined around her finger, was it possible to imagine 
it ? Was it possible to be thus near her ; to hear her 
breathe ? She breathed ! then the stars might breathe 
also. Gilliatt felt a thrill through him. He was the 
most miserable and yet the happiest of men. He knew 
not what to do. His delirious joy at seeing her annihi- 
lated him. Was it indeed Deruchette there, and he so 
near ? His thoughts, bewildered and yet fixed, were 
fascinated by that figure as by a dazzling jewel. He 
gazed upon her neck — her hair. He did not even say 
to himself that all that would now belong to him; that 
before long — to-morrow, perhaps— he would have the 
right to take off that cap, to unknot that ribbon. He 
would not have conceived for a moment the audacity 
of thinking even so far. Touching in idea is alrnost 
like touching with the hand. Love was with Gilliatt 
like honey to the bear. He thought confusedly ; he knew 


426 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


not what possessed him. The nightingale still sang. 
He felt as if about to breathe his life out. 

The idea of rising, of jumping over the wall, of speak- 
ing to D^ruchette, never came into his mind. If it had, 
he would have turned and fled. If an5d:hing resembling 
a thought had begun to dawn in his mind, it was this : 
that D^ruchette was thete, that he wanted nothing 
more, and that eternity had begun. 

A noise aroused them both — her from her reverie^ 
him from his ecstasy. 

Some one was walking in the garden. It was not 
possible to see who was approaching on account of the 
trees. It was the footstep of a man. 

D^ruchette raised her eyes. 

The steps drew nearer, then ceased. The person 
walking had stopped. He must have been quite 
near. The path beside which was the bench wound 
between two clumps of trees. The stranger was there 
in the alley between the trees, at a few paces from 
the seat. 

Accident had so placed the branches that D^ruchette 
could see the newcomer while Gilliatt could not. 

The moon cast on the ground beyond the trees a 
shadow which reached to the garden seat. 

Gilliatt could see this shadow. 

He looked at D^ruchette. 

She was quite pale ; her mouth was partly open, as 
with a suppressed cry of surprise. She had just half 
risen from the bench, and sunk again upon it. There 
was in her attitude a mixture of fascination with a desire 
to fly. Her surprise was enchantment mingled with 
timidity. She had upon her lips almost the light of a 
smile, with the fullness of tears in her eyes. She seemed 
as if transfigured by that presence ; as if the being 
whom she saw before her belonged not to this earth. 
The reflection of an angel was in her look. 

The stranger, who was to Gilliatt only a shadow, 
spoke. A voice issued from the trees, softer than the 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


427 

voice of a woman ; yet it was the voice of a man. Gilliatt 
heard these words, — 

'‘I see you, mademoiselle, every Sunday and every 
Thursday. They tell me that once you used not to 
come so often. It is a remark that has been made. I 
ask your pardon. I have never spoken to you ; it was 
my duty ; but I come to speak to you to-day, for it is 
still my duty. It is right that I speak to you first. 
The Cashmere sails to-morrow. This is why I have 
come. You walk every evening in your garden. It 
would be wrong of me to know your habits so well if 
I had not the thought that I have. Mademoiselle, you 
are poor ; since this morning I am rich. Will you have 
me for your husband ? ” 

D6ruchette joined her two hands in a suppliant atti- 
tude, and looked at the speaker, silent, with fixed eyes, 
and trembling from head to foot. 

The voice continued, — 

“ I love you. God made not the heart of man to be 
silent. He has promised him eternity with the inten- 
tion that he sho^d not be alone. There is for me but 
one woman upon earth. It is you. I think of you as 
of a prayer. My faith is in God, and my hope in you. 
What wings I have you bear. You are my life, and 
already my supreme happiness.*' 

'' Sir,’* said D6ruchette, “ there is no one to answer 
in the house ! *' 

The voice rose again, — 

Yes, I have encouraged that dream. Heaven has 
not forbidden us to dream. You are like a glory in my 
eyes. I love you deeply, mademoiselle. To me you are 
holy innocence. I know it is the hour at which your 
household have retired to rest, but I had no choice of 
any other moment. Do you remember that passage of 
the Bible which some one read before us ? It was the 
twenty-fifth chapter of Genesis. I have thought of it 
often since. M. H6rode said to me, ‘ You must have a 
rich wife.’ I replied^ ‘ No, I must have a poor wife.* I 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


-428 

speak to you, mademoiselle, without venturing to ap- 
proach you ; I would step even farther back if it was 
your wish that my shadow should not touch your feet. 
You alone are supreme. You will come to me if such 
is your will. I love and wait. You are the living form 
of a benediction.” 

“ I did not know, sir,” stammered D^ruchette, ‘‘ that 
any one remarked me on Sundays and Thursdays.” 

The voice continued, — 

“We are powerless against celestial things. The whole 
Law is love. Marriage is Canaan ; you are to me the 
promised land of beauty.” 

Deruchette replied, “ I did not think I did wrong any 
more than other persons who are strict.” 

The voice continued, — 

“ God manifests His wiU in the flowers, in the light 
of dawn, in the spring ; and love is of His ordaining. 
You are beautiful in this holy shadow of night. This 
garden has been tended by you ; in its perfumes there is 
something of your breath. The affinities of our souls 
do not depend on us. They cannot be counted with our 
sins. You were there, that was all. I was there, that 
was all. I did nothing but feel that I loved you. Some- 
times my eyes rested upon you. I was wrong, but 
what could I do ? It was through looking at you that 
all happened. I could not restrain my gaze. There 
are mysterious impulses which are above our search. 
The heart is the chief of all temples. To have your 
spirit in my house — this is the terrestrial paradise for 
which I hope. Say, will you be mine ? As long as I was 
poor, I spoke not. I know your age. You are twenty- 
one ; I am twenty-six. I go to-morrow ; if you refuse 
me I return no more. Oh, be my betrothed ; will you 
not ? More than once have my eyes, in spite of myself, 
addressed to you that question. I love you ; answer 
me. I will speak to your uncle as soon as he is able 
to receive me ; but I turn first to you. To Rebecca 1 
plead for Rebecca, unless you love me not.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


429 


D4nichette hung her head and murmured, — 

“ Oh I I worship him.” 

The words were spoken in a voice so low that only 
Gilliatt heard them. 

She remained with her head lowered, as if by shading 
her face she hoped to conceal her thoughts. 

There was a pause. No leaf among the trees was 
stirred. It was that solemn and peaceful moment when 
the slumber of external things mingles with the sleej) of 
living creatures, and night seems to listen to the beating 
of Nature’s heart. In Qie midst of that retirement, like 
a harmony making the silence more complete, rose the 
wide murmur of the sea. 

The voice was heard again. 

“ Mademoiselle ! ” 

Deruchette started. 

Again the voice spoke. 

“You are silent.” 

“ What would you have me say ? ” 

“ I wait for your reply.” 

“ God has heard it,” said Deruchette. 

Then the voice became almost sonorous, and at the 
same time softer than before, and these words issued 
from the leaves as from a burning bush, — 

“You are my betrothed. Come then to me. Let the 
blue sky, with all its stars, be witness of this taking of 
my soul to thine ; and let our first embrace be mingled 
with that firmament.” 

Deruchette arose, and remained an instant motion- 
less, looking straight before her, doubtless in another’s 
eyes. Then, with slow steps, with head erect, her arms 
drooping, but with the fingers of her hands wide apart, 
like one who leans on some unseen support, she advanced 
towards the trees, and was out of sight. 

A moment afterwards, instead of the one shadow 
upon the gravelled walk there were two. They mingled 
together. Gilliatt saw at his feet the embrace of those 
two shadows. 


430 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


In certain moments of crisis, time flows from us as 
his sands from the hour-glass, and we have no feeling 
of his flight. That pair on the one hand, who were 
ignorant of the presence of a witness, and saw him not ; 
on the other, that witness of their joy who could not 
see them, but who knew of their presence — how many 
minutes did they remain thus in that mysterious sus- 
pension of themselves ? It would be impossible to say. 
Suddenly a noise burst forth at a dist^ce. A voice 
was heard cr5dng “ Help ! ” and the harbour bell began 
to sound. It is probable that in those celestial trans- 
ports of delight they heard no echo of that tumult. 

The bell continued to ring. Any one who had sought 
GLlliatt then in the angle of the wall would have found 
him no longer there. 


BOOK IL— GRATITUDE AND 
DESPOTISM. 


I. 

JOY SURROUNDED BY TORTURES. 

Mess Lethierry pulled the bell furiously, then stopped 
abruptly. A man had just turned the comer of the 
quay. It was Gilliatt. 

Lethierry ran towards him, or rather flung himself 
upon him, seized his hand between his own, and looked 
him in the face for a moment, silent. It was the silence 
of an explosion struggling to find an issue. 

Then pulling and shaking him with violence, and 
squeezing him in his arms, he compelled him to enter 
the lower room of the Brav^es, pushed back with his 
heel the door which had remained half opened, sat 
down, or sank into a chair beside a great table lighted 
by the moon, the reflection of which gave a vague pallor 
to Gilliatt’s face, and with a voice of intermingled laughter 
and tears cried, — 

Ah I my son, my player of the bagpipe ! I knew 
well that it was you. The sloop, farhleu ! Tell me the 
story. You went there, then. A^y, they would have 
burnt you a hundred years ago. It is magic ! There 
isn’t a screw missing. I have looked at everything 
already, recognized everything, handled everything. I 
guessed that the paddles were in the two cases. And 


432 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


here you are once more ! I have been looking for you 
in the little cabin. I rang the bell. I was seeking for 
you. I said to myself, ' Where is he, that I may devour 
him ? * You must admit that wonderful things do come 
to pass. He has brought back hfe to me. Tonnerre! 
you are an angel ! Yes, yes ; it is my engine. Nobody 
will believe it ; people will see it, and say, ' It can’t be 
true.* Not a tap, not a pin missing. The feed-pipe has 
never budged an inch. It is incredible that there should 
have been no more damage. We have only to put a httle 
oil. But how did you accomplish it ? To think that 
the Durande will be moving again I The axle of the 
wheels must have been taken to pieces by some watch- 
maker. Give me your word that I am not crazy.” 

He sprang to his feet, breathed a moment, and con- 
tinued, — 

“ Assure me of that. What a revolution ! I pinched 
myself to be certain I was not dreaming. You are my 
child, you are my son, you are my Providence. Brave 
lad ! To go and fetch my good old engine ! In the open 
sea, among those cut-throat rocks. I have seen some 
strange things in my hfe ; nothing hke that. I have 
known Parisians who were veritable demons, but I’U 
defy them to have done that. It beats the Bastile. 
I have seen the gauchos labouring in the Pampas, with a 
crooked branch of a tree for a plough and a bundle of 
thorn-bushes for a harrow, dragged by a leathern strap ; 
they get harvests of wheat that way, with grains as big 
as hedge-nuts. But that is a trifle compared with your 
feats. You have performed a miracle — a real one. Ah ! 
gredin! let me hug you. How they will gossip in St. 
Sampson ! I shall set to work at once to build the boat. 
It is astonishing that the crsmk is all right. Gentlemen, 
he has been to the Douvres : I say to the Douvres. He 
went alone. The Douvres ! I defy you to find a worse 
spot. Do you know, have they told you, that it’s proved 
that Clubin sent the Durande to the bottom to swindle 
me out of money which he had to bring me ? He made 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


433 


Tangrouille drunk. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you 
another day of his piratical tricks. I, stupid idiot, had 
confidence in Clubin. But he trapped himself, the 
villain, for he couldn’t have got away. There is a God 
above, scoundrel ! Do you see, Gilliatt, bang ! bang 1 
the irons in the fire ; we’ll begin at once to rebuild the 
Durande. We’ll have her twenty feet longer. They 
build them longer now than they did. I’ll buy the wood 
from Dantzic and Breme. Now I have got the machinery 
they will give me credit again. They’ll have confidence 
now.” 

Mess Lethierry stopped, lifted his eyes with that look 
which sees the heavens through the roof, and muttered, 
** Yes, there is a power on high ! ” 

Then he placed the middle finger of his right hand 
between his two eyebrows, and tapped with his nail 
there, an action which indicates a project passing through 
the mind, and he continued, — 

“ Nevertheless, to begin again, on a grand scale, a 
httle ready money would have been useful. Ah 1 if I 
only had my three banknotes, the seventy-five thousand 
francs that that robber Rantaine returned, and that 
vagabond Clubin stole.” 

Gilliatt silently felt in his pocket, and drew out some- 
thing which he placed before him. It was the leathern 
belt that he had brought back. He opened, and spread 
it out upon the table ; in the inside the word “ Clubin ” 
could be deciphered in the light of the moon. He then 
took out of the pocket of the belt a box, and out of the 
box three pieces of paper, which he unfolded and offered 
to Lethierry. 

Lethierry examined them. It was light enough to 
read the figures “ i,ooo,” and the word thousand ” 
was also perfectly visible. Mess Lethierry took the 
three notes, placed them on the table one beside the 
other, looked at them, looked at Gilliatt, stood for a 
moment dumb ; and then began again, like an eruption 
after an explosion, — 


434 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


'' These too ! You are a marvel. My banknotes ! all 
three. A thousand pounds each. My seventy-five thou- 
sand francs. Why, you must have gone down to the 
infernal regions. It is Gubin’s belt. Pardieu! I can 
read his vile name. Gilliatt has brought back engine 
and money too. There will be something to put in the 
papers. I will buy some timber of the finest quality. 
I guess how it was : you found his carcass ; Gubin 
mouldering away in some comer. We’ll have some Dant- 
zic pine and Br^me oak ; we’ll have a first-rate planking 
— oak within and pine without. In old times they didn’t 
build so well, but their work lasted longer ; the wood 
was better seasoned, because they did not build so 
much. We’ll build the hull perhaps of elm. Elm is 
good for the parts in the water. To be dry sometimes, 
and sometimes wet, rots the timbers ; the elm requires 
to be always wet ; it’s a wood that feeds upon water. 
What a splendid Durande we’ll build ! The lawyers will 
riot trouble me again. I shall want no more credit. I 
have some money of my own. Did ever any one see a 
man like Gilliatt ? I was struck down to the ground, I 
was a dead man. He comes and sets me up again as 
firm as ever. And all the while I was never thinking 
about him. He had gone clean out of my mind ; but I 
recollect everything now. Poor lad ! Ah 1 by the way, 
you know you are to marry D^mchette.” 

Gilliatt leaned with his back against the wall, like 
one who staggers, and said in a tone very low, but 
distinct, — 

No.” 

Mess Lethierry started. 

How. no ! ” 

Gilliatt replied, — 

I do not love her.” 

Mess Lethierry went to the window, opened and re- 
closed it, took the three banknotes, folded them, placed 
the iron box on top, scratched his head, seized Gubin’s 
belt, flung it violently against the wall, and exclaimed — 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA, 


435 


" You must be mad/' 

He thrust his fists into his pockets and exclaimed, — 
You don't love D4ruchette ? What ! was it at me, 
then, that you used to play the bagpipe ? ” 

Gilliatt, still supporting himself by the wall, turned 
pale, as a man near his end. As he became pale, Lethi- 
erry became redder. 

There's an idiot for you ! He doesn’t love D4ru- 
chette. Very good ; make up your mind to love her, 
for she shall never marry any but you. A devilish pretty 
story that ; and you think that I believe you. If there 
is anything really the matter with you, send for a doctor ; 
but don’t talk nonsense. You can’t have had time to 
quarrel, or get out of temper with her. It is true that 
lovers are great fools sometimes. Come now, what are 
your reasons ? If you have any, say. People don’t 
make geese of themselves without reasons. But I have 
wool in my ears ; perhaps I didn’t understand. Repeat 
to me what you said.” 

GiUiatt replied, — 

“ I said. No I ” 

“You said. No. He holds to it, the lunatic ! You 
must be crazy. You said. No. Here’s a stupidity be- 
yond an5rthing ever heard of. Why, people have had 
their heads shaved for much less than that. What ! 
you don’t like Deruchette ? Oh, then, it was out of affec- 
tion for the old man that you did all these things ? It 
was for the sake of papa that you went to the Douvres, 
that you endured cold and heat, and was half dead with 
hunger and thirst, and ate the limpets off the rocks, and 
had the fog, the rain, and the wind for your bedroom, 
and brought me back my machine, just as you might 
bring a pretty woman her little canary that had escaped 
from its cage. And the tempest that we had three days 
ago ! Do you think I don’t bear it in mind ? You must 
have had a time of it I It was in the midst of all this 
misery, alongside of my old craft, that you shaped, and 
cut, and turned, and twisted, and dragged about, and 


436 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA 


filed, and sawed, and carpentered, and schemed, and ' 
performed more miracles there by yourself than all the ! 
saints in paradise. Ah ! you annoyed me enough once | 
with your bagpipe. They call it a hiniou in Brittany. 
Always the same tune, too, silly fellow. And yet you t 
don’t love D6ruchette ? I don’t know what is the matter 
with you. I recollect it all now. I was there in the 
corner ; D4ruchette said, ‘ He shall be my husband ; ’ 
and so you shall. You don’t love her ! Either you 
must be mad, or else I am mad. And you stand there, 
and speak not a word. I tell you you are not at liberty 
to do all the things you have done, and then say, after ; 
all, ‘ I don’t love Deruchette.’ People don’t do others ■ 
services in order to put them in a passion. Well, if you 
don’t marry her, she shall be single all her life. In the 
first place, I shall want you. You must be the pilot of 
the Durande. Do you imagine I mean to part with you 
like that ? No, no, my brave boy ; I don’t let you go. 

I have got you now ; I’ll not even listen to you. Where 
will they find a sailor like you ? You are the man I 
want. But why don’t you speak ? ” 

Meanwhile the harbour bell had aroused the house- ^ 
hold and the neighbourhood. Douce and Grace had ’ 
risen, and had just entered the lower room, silent and 
astonished. Grace had a candle in her hand. A group 
of neighbours, townspeople, sailors, and peasants, who 
had rushed out of their houses, were outside on the quay, 
gazing in wonderment at the funnel of the Durande in 
the sloop. Some, hearing Lethierry’s voice in the lower 
room, began to glide in by the hdf-opened door. Be- 
tween the faces of two worthy old women appeared that 
of Sieur Landoys, who had the good fortune always to 
find himself where he would have regretted to have been 
absent. 

Men feel a satisfaction in having witnesses of their 
joys. The sort of scattered support which a crowd pre- 
sents pleases them at such times ; their delight draws 
new life from it. Mess Lethierry suddenly perceived 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


437 

that there were persons about him, and he welcomed 
the audience at once. 

“ Ah ! you are here, my friends ? I am very glad to 
see you. You know the news ? That man has been 
there, and brought it back. — How d’ye do, Sieur Lan- 
doys ? When I woke up just now, the first thing I spied 
was the funnel. It was under my window. There’s not 
a nail missing. They make pictures of Napoleon’s deeds, 
but I think more of that than of the battle of Austerhtz. 
— You have just left your beds, my good friends. The 
Durande has found you sleeping. While you are putting 
on your nightcaps and blowing out your candles there 
are others working like heroes. We are a set of cowards 
and do-nothings ; we sit at home rubbing our rheuma- 
tisms ; but happily that does not prevent there being 
some of another stamp. The man of the Bd de la Rue has 
arrived from the Douvres rocks. He has fished up the 
Durande from the bottom of the sea, and fished up my 
money out of Clubin’s pocket from a greater depth still. 
— But how did you contrive to do it ? All the powers of 
darkness were against you — the wind and the sea — the 
sea and the wind. It’s true enough that you are a magi- 
cian. Those who say that are not so stupid after 
The Durande is back again. The tempests may rage 
now ; that cuts the ground from under them. — My 
friends, I can inform you that there was no shipwreck 
after aU. I have examined all the machinery. It is 
like new, perfect. The valves go as easily ss rollers. 
You would think them made yesterday. You know 
that the waste water is carried away by a tube inside 
another tube, through which come the waters from the 
boilers ; this was to economize the heat. Well, the two 
tubes are there as good as ever. The complete engine, 
in fact. She is all there, her wheels and all. — Ah ! you 
shall marry her.” 

“ Marry the complete engine ? ” asked Sieur Landoys. 

“ No ; Deruchette : yes ; the engine. Both of them. 
He shall be my double son-in-law. He shall be her cap- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


438 

tain. — Good-day, Captain Gilliatt ; for there will soon 
be a captain of the Durande. We are going to do a 
world of business again. There will be trade, circula- 
tion, cargoes of oxen and sheep. I wouldn’t give St. 
Sampson for London now. And there stands the author 
of aU this. It was a curious adventure, I can tell you. 
You will read about it on Saturday in old Mauger’s 
Gazette, Malicious Gilliatt is very malicious. What’s 
the meaning of these louis-d’ors here ? ” 

Mess Lethierry had just observed, through the open- 
ing of the lid, that there was some gold in the box upon 
the notes. He seized it, opened and emptied it into the 
palm of his hand, and put the handful of guineas on the 
table, 

“For the poor, Sieur Landoys. Give those sovereigns 
from me to the constable of St. Sampson. You recollect 
Rantaine’s letter. I showed it to you. Very well ; I’ve 
got the banknotes. Now we can buy some oak and fir, 
and go to work at carpentering. Look you ! Do you 
remember the weather of three days ago ? What a hur- 
ricane of wind and rain ! Gilliatt endured aU that upon 
the Douvres. That didn’t prevent his taking the wreck 
to pieces, as I might take my watch. Thanks to him, I 
am on my legs again. — Old “ Lethierry’s galley ” is go- 
ing to run again, ladies and gentlemen. A nutshell with 
a couple of wheels and a funnel. I always had that idea. 
I used to say to m5^elf, one day I will do it. That was 
a good long time back. It was an idea that came in my 
head at Paris, at the coffee-house at the corner of the 
Rue Christine and the Rue Dauphine, when I was read- 
ing a paper which had an account of it. Do you know 
that Gilliatt would think nothing of putting the machine 
at Marly in his pocket, and walking about with it ? He 
is wrought-iron, that man ; tempered steel, a mariner 
of invaluable qualities, an excellent smith, an extraor- 
dinary fellow, more astonishing than the Prince of Hohen- 
lohe. That is what I call a man with brains. We are 
children by the side of him. Sea-wolves we may think 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


439 


ourselves ; but the sea-lion is there. Hurrah for Gilliatt ! 
I do not blow how he has done it ; but certainly he must 
have been the devil. And how can I do other than give 
him D^ruchette ? ” 

For some minutes D6ruchette had been in the room. 
She had not spoken or moved since she entered. She 
had glided in Hke a shadow, had sat down almost unper- 
ceived behind Mess Lethierry, who stood before her, 
loquacious, stormy, joyful,, abounding in gestures, and 
talking in a loud voice. A little while after her another 
silent apparition had appeared. A man attired in black, 
with a wlxite cravat, holding his hat in his hand, stood in 
the doorway. There were now several candles among 
the group, which had gradually increased in number. 
These lights were near the man attired in black. His 
profile and youthful and pleasing complexion showed it- 
self against the dark background with the clearness of 
an engraving on a medal. He leaned with his shoulders 
against the framework of the door, and held his left hand 
to his forehead, an attitude of unconscious grace, which 
contrasted the breadth of his forehead with the smallness 
of his hand. There was an expression of anguish in his 
contracted , lips as he looked on and listened with pro- 
found attention. The standers-by having recognized 
M. Caudray, the rector of the parish, had fallen back 
to allow him to pass ; but he remained upon the thresh- 
old. There was hesitation in his posture, but decision 
in his looks, which now and then met those of Deru- 
chette. With regard to Gilliatt, whether by chance 
or design, he was in shadow, and was only perceived 
indistinctly. 

At first Mess Lethierry did not observe Caudray, but 
he saw Deruchette. He went to her and kissed her fer- 
vently upon the forehead, stretching forth his hand at 
the same time towards the dark comer where Gilliatt was 
standing. 

“ D4mchette,” he said, we are rich again ; and there 
is your future husband.” 


440 


THE TOILERS. OF THE SEA. 

D4ruchette raised her head, and looked into the dusky 
comer bewildered. 

Mess Lethierry continued,^ — 

“ The marriage shall take place immediately, if it can ; 
they shall have a licence ; the formalities here are not 
very troublesome ; the dean can do what he pleases ; 
people are married before they have time to turn round. 
It is not as in France, where you must have banns, and 
publications, and delays, and all that fuss. You will be 
able to boast of being the wife of a brave man. No one 
can say he is not. I thought so from the day when I 
saw him come back from Herm with the little cannon. 
But now he comes back from the Douvres with his for- 
tune and mine, and the fortune of this country — a man 
of whom the world will talk a ^eat deal more one day. 
You said once, ‘ I wiU marry him,* and you shall marry 
him, and you shall have little children, and I will be 
grandpapa ; and you will have the good fortune to be 
the vife of a noble fellow, who can work, who can be 
useful to his fellow-men ; a surprising fellow, worth a 
hundred others ; a man who can rescue other people’s 
inventions, a providence ! At all events, you will not 
have married, like so many other silly girls about here, 
a soldier or a priest — that is, a man who kills or a man 
who lies. — But what are you doing there, Gilliatt ? No- 
body can see you. — Douce, Grace, everybody there ! 
Bring a light, I say. Light up my son-in-law for me. — I 
betroth you to each other, my children : here stands your 
husband, here my son, Gilliatt of the BA de la Rue, that 
noble fellow, that great seaman ; I will have no other 
son-in-law, and you no other husband. I pledge my 
word to that once more in God’s name. — Ah I you are 
there. Monsieur the Cur4. You wiU marry these young 
people for us.” 

Lethierry’s eye had just faUen upon Caudray. 

Douce and Grace had done as they were directed. Two 
candles placed upon the table cast a light upon GiUiatt 
from head to foot. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


441 


“ There’s a fine fellow,” said Mess Lethierry. 

Gilliatt’s appearance was hideous. 

He was in the condition in which he had that morning 
set sail from the rocks ; in rags, his bare elbows showing 
through his sleeves ; his beard long, his hair rough and 
wild; his eyes bloodshot, his skin peeling, his hands 
covered with wounds, his feet naked. Some of the 
blisters left by the devil-fish were still visible upon his 
arms. 

Lethierry gazed at him. 

“ This is my son-in-law,” he said. “ How he has 
struggled with the sea ! He is all in rags. What shoul- 
ders ; what hands I There’s a splendid fellow I ” 

Grace ran to Deruchette and supported her head. She 
had fainted. 


II. 

THE LEATHERN TRUNK. 

At break of day St. Sampson was on foot, and all the 
people of St. Peter’s Port began to flock there. The 
resurrection of the Durande caused a commotion in the 
island not unlike what was caused by the Salette in 
the south of France. There was a crowd on the quay 
staring at the funnel standing erect in the sloop. They 
were anxious to see and handle the machinery ; but 
Lethierry, after making a new and triumphant survey 
of the whole by daylight, had placed two sailors aboard 
with instructions to prevent any one approaching it 
The fimnel, however, furnished food enough for contem- 
plation. The crowd gaped with astonishment. They 
talked of nothing but Gilliatt. They remarked on his 
surname of " Malicious Gilliatt ; ” and their admiration 
wound up with the remark, ** It is not ples^ant to have 
people in the island who can do things like that.” 

Mess Lethierry was seen from outside the house, seated 


442 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


at a table before the window, writing, with one eye on 
the paper and another on the sloop. He was so com- 
pletely absorbed that he had only once stopped to call 
Douce and ask after Deruchette. Douce replied, ** Made- 
moiselle has risen and is gone out.” Mess Lethierry re4 
plied, She is right to take the air. She was a little un- 
well last night, owing to the heat. There was a crowd 
in the room. This, and her surprise and joy, and the 
windows being all closed, overcame her. She will have 
a husband to be proud of.” And he had gone on with 
his writing. He had already finished and sealed two 
letters, addressed to the most important shipbuilders at 
Br^me. He now finished the sealing of the third. 

The noise of a wheel upon the quay induced him to look 
up. He leaned out of the window, and observed coming 
from the path which led to the Bfi de la Rue a boy push- 
ing a wheelbarrow. The boy was going towards St. Peter’s 
Port. In the barrow was a portmanteau of brown leather 
studded with nails of brass and white metal. 

Mess Lethierry called to the boy, — 

Where are you going, my lad ? ” 

The boy stopped, and replied, — 

“ To the Cashmere** 

" What for ? ” 

“ To take this trunk aboard.” 

Very good ; you shall take these three letters too.” 

Mess Lethierry opened the drawer of his table, took a 
piece of string, tied the three letters which he had just 
written across and across, and threw the packet to the 
boy, who caught it between his hands. 

“ Tell the captain of the Cashmere they are my letters, 
and to take care of them. They are for Germany — 
Brdme, via London.” 

I can’t speak to the captain, Mess Lethierry.” 

Why not ? 

“ The Cashmere is not at the quay.” 

“Ah!” 

“ She is in the roads.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


443 


“ Ay, true ; on account of the sea.” 

'' I can only speak to the man who takes the things 
aboard.” 

” You will tell him, then, to look to the letters.” 

” Very well. Mess Lethierry.” 

” At what time does the Cashmere sail ? ” 

** At twelve.” 

” The tide will flow at noon ; she will have it against 
her.” 

” But she will have the wind,” answered the lad. 

” Boy,” said Mess Lethierry, pointing with his fore- 
finger at the engine in the sloop, “do you see that? 
There is something which laughs at winds and tides.” 

The boy put the letters in his pocket, took up the 
handies or the barrow again, and went on his way to- 
wards the town. Mess Lethierry called, “ Douce 
Grace I ” 

Grace opened the door a little way. 

“ What is it, Mess ? ” 

“ Come in and wait a moment.” 

Mess Lethierry took a sheet of paper and began to 
write. If Grace, standing behind him, had been curious, 
and had leaned forward while he was writing, she might 
have read as follows, — 

“ I have written to Br^me for the timber. I have 
appointments aU the morning with carpenters for the 
estimate. The rebuilding will go on fast. You must 
go yourself to the Deanery for a licence. It is my wish 
that the marriage should take place as soon as possible ; 
immediately would be better. I am busy about the 
Durande. Do you be busy about Deruchette.” 

He dated it and signed Lethierry.” He did not take 
the trouble to seal it, but merely folded it in four, and 
handed it to Grace, saying, — 

“ Take that to Gilliatt.” 

“ To the Bfi de la Rue ? ” 

“ To the Bfl de la Rue.” 


BOOK III.— THE DEPARTURE OF 
THE CASHMERE. 


I. 

THE HAVELET NEAR THE CHURCH. 

When there is a crowd at St. Sampson St. Peter's Port is 
soon deserted. A point of curiosity at a given place is 
like an air-pump. News travel fast in small places. 
Going to see the funnel of the Durande under Mess 
Lethierry’s window had been, since sunrise, the business 
of the Guernsey folks. Every other event was eclipsed 
by this. The death of the Dean of St. Asaph was for- 
gotten, together with the question of the Rev. Mr. Cau- 
dray, his sudden riches, and the departure of the Cash- 
mere. The machinery of the Durande brought back 
from the Douvres rocks was the order of the day. People 
were incredulous. The shipwreck had appeared ex- 
traordinary, the salvage seemed impossible. Everybody 
hastened to assure himself of the truth by the help of his 
own eyes. Business of every kind was suspended. Long 
strings of townsfolk with, their families, from the “ Vesin ** 
up to the ** Mess,” men and women, gentlemen, mothers 
with children, infants with dolls, were coming by every 
road or pathway to see ” the thing to be seen ” at the 
Brav^es, turning their backs upon St. Peter’s Port. 
Many vShops at St. Peter’s Port were closed. In the 
Commercial Arcade there was an absolute stagnation in 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


445 


buying and seUing. The Durande alone obtained atten- 
tion. Not^ a single shopkeeper had had a “ handsell ” 
that morning, except a jeweller, who was surprised at 
having sold a wedding-ring to “ a sort of man who ap- 
peared in a great hurry, and who asked for the house of 
the Dean.” The shops which remained open were centres 
of gossip, where loiterers discussed the miraculous sal- 
vage. There was not a foot-passenger at the ” Hyv- 
reuse,” which is known in these days, nobody knows why, 
as Cambridge Park ; no one was in the High Street, then 
called the Grande Rue ; nor in Smith Street, known then 
only as the Rue des Forges; nobodv in Hauteville. 
The Esplanade itself was deserted- One might have 
guessed it to be Sunday. A visit from a Royi person- 
age to review the militia at the Ancresse could not have 
emptied the town more completely. All this hubbub 
about a ” nobody ” like Gilliatt caused a good deal of 
shrugging of the shoulders among persons of grave and 
correct habits. 

The church of St. Peter’s Port, with its three gable- 
ends placed side by side, its transept, and its steeple, 
stands at the water’s side at the end of the harbour, and 
nearly on the landing-place itself, where it welcomes those 
who arrive, and gives the departing ” God-speed.” It 
represents the capital letter at the beginning of that long 
line which forms the front of the town towards the sea. 

It is both the parish church of St. Peter’s Port and 
the chief place of the Deanery of the whole island. Its 
officiating minister is the surrogate of the bishop, a 
clergyman in full orders. 

The harbour of St- Peter’s Port, a very fine and large 
port at the present day, was at that epoch, and even up 
to ten years ago, less considerable than the harbour of 
St. Sampson. It was enclosed by two enormous thick 
walls, beginning at the water's edge on both sides, and 
curving till they almost joined again at the extremities, 
where there stood a little white lighthouse. Under this 
lighthouse a narrow gullet, bearing still the two rings 


446 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


of the chain with which it was the custom to bar the 
passage in ancient times, formed the entrance for ves- 
sels. The harbour of St. Peter’s Port might be well 
compared with the claws of a huge lobster opened a little 
way. This kind of pincers took from the ocean a portion 
of the sea, which it compelled to remain calm. But dur- 
ing the easterly winds the waves rolled heavily against 
the narrow entrance* the port was agitated, and it was 
better not to enter. This is what had happened with 
the Cashmere that day, which had accordingly anchored 
in the roads. 

The vessels during the easterly winds preferred this 
course, which besides saved them the port dues. On 
these occasions the boatmen of the town, a hardy race 
of mariners whom the new port has thrown out of employ- 
ment, came in their boats to fetch passengers at the land- 
ing-place or at stations on the shore, and carried them 
with their luggage, often in heavy seas, but always with- 
out accident, to the vessels about to sail. The east wind 
blows off the shore, and is very favourable for the pas- 
sage to England ; the vessel at such times rolls, but does 
not pitch. 

When a vessel happened to be in the port, everybody 
embarked from the quay. When it was in the roads they 
took their choice, and embarked from any point of the 
coast near the moorings. The Havelet *’ was one of 
these creeks. This little harbour (which is the signifi- 
cation of the word) was near the town, but was so soli- 
tary that it seemed far off. This solitude was owing to 
the shelter of the high cliffs of Fort St. George, which 
overlooked this retired inlet. The Havelet was access- 
ible by several paths. The most direct was along the 
water’s side. It had the advantage of leading to the 
town and to the church in five minutes* walk, and the 
disadvantage of being covered by the sea twice a day. 
The other paths were more or less abrupt, and led down 
to the creek through gaps in the steep rocks. Even in 
broad daylight it was dusk in the Havelet. Huge blocks 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


447 


overhanging it on all sides, and thick bushes and brambleS| 
cast a sort of soft twilight upon the rocks and waves be- 
low. Nothing could be more peaceful than this spot in 
calm weather ; nothing more tumultuous during heavy 
seas. There were ends of branches there which were 
always wet with foam. In the springtime the place was 
full of flowers, of nests, of perfumes, of birds, of butter- 
flies, and bees. Thanks to recent improvements, this 
wild nook no longer exists. Fine, straight lines have 
taken the place of these wild features ; masonry, quays, 
and little gardens have made their appearance ; earth- 
work has been the rage, and taste has finally subdued the 
eccentricities of the cliff, and, the irregumities of the 
rocks below. 


II. 


DESPAIR CONFRONTS DESPAIR. 

It was a little before ten o'clock in the morning. The 
crowd at St. Sampson, according to all appearance, was 
increasing. The multitude, feverish with curiosity, was 
moving towards the north ; and the Havelet, which is 
in the south, was more deserted than ever. 

Notwithstanding this, there was a boat there and a 
boatman. In the boat was a travelling-bag. The boat- 
man seemed to be waiting for some one.^ 

The Cashmere was visible at anchor in roads, as she 
did not start till midday ; there was as yet no sign of 
moving aboard. 

A passer-by, who had listened from one of the ladder- 
paths up the cliffs overhead, would have heard a mur- 
mur of words in the Havelet, and if he had leaned over 
the overhanging cliff might have seen, at some distance 
from the boat, in a comer among the rocks and branches, 
where the eye of the boatman could not reach them, a 
man and a woman. It was Caudray and D^ruchette. 


44S 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


These obscure nooks on the seashore, the chosen places 
of lady bathers, are not always so solitary as is believed. 
Persons are sometimes observed and heard there. Those 
who seek shelter and solitude in them may easily be fol- 
lowed through the thick bushes, and, thanks to the mul- 
tiplicity and entanglement of the paths, the granite and 
the shrubs which favour the stolen interview may also 
favour the witness. 

Caudray and D6ruchette stood face to face, looking 
into each other*s eyes, and holding each other by the 
hand. Deruchette was speaking. Caudray was silent. 
A tear that had gathered upon his eyelash hung there 
and did not fall. 

Grief and strong passion were imprinted in his calm, 
religious countenance. A painful resignation was there 
too — a resignation hostile to faith, though springing from 
it. Upon that face, simply devout until then, there was 
the commencement of a fatal expression. He who had 
hitherto meditated only on doctrine, had begun to tnedi* 
tate on Fate — an unhealthy meditation for a priest. Faith 
dissolves under its action. Nothing disturbs the religious 
mind more than that bending under the weight of the 
unknown. Life seems a perpetual succession of events 
to which man submits. We never know from which 
direction the sudden blow will come. Misery and happi- 
ness enter or make their exit, like unexpected guests. 
Their laws, their orbit, their principle of gravitation, are 
beyond man’s grasp. Virtue conducts not to happiness, 
nor crime to retribution : conscience has one logic, fate 
another; and neither coincide. Nothing is foreseen.^ We 
live confusedly, and from hand to mouth. Conscience 
is the straight line, life is the whirlwind, which creates 
above man’s head either black chaos or the blue sky. 
Fate does not practise the art of gradations. Her wheel 
turns sometimes so fast that we can scarcely distinguish 
the interval between one revolution and another, or the 
link between yesterday and to-day. Caudray was a 
believer whose faith did not exclude reason, and whose 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


449 

priestly training did not shut him out from passion. 
Those religious systems which impose celibacy on the 
priesthood are not without reason for it. Nothing really 
destroys the individuality of the priest more than love. 
All sorts of clouds seemed to darken Caudray^s soul. 
He looked too long into Deruchette's eyes. These two 
beings worshipped each other. 

There was in Caudray's eye the mute adoration of 
despair. 

Deruchette spoke. 

“You must not leave me. I shall not have strength. 
I thought I could bid you farewell. I cannot. Why 
did you come yesterday ? You should not have come 
if you were going so soon. I never spoke to you. I 
loved you, but knew it not. Only that day, when M. 
H4rode read to us the story of Refecca, and when your 
eyes met mine, my cheeks were like fire, and I thought 
only of how Rebecca’s face must have burnt like mine ; 
and yet, if any one had told me yesterday that I loved 
you, I might have laughed at it. This is what is so 
terrible. It has been like a treason. I did not take 
heed. I went to the church, I saw you, I thought every- 
body there was like myself. I do not reproach you; 
you did nothing to make me love you ; you did nothing 
but look at me ; it is not your fault if you look at people ; 
and yet that made me love you so much. I did not even 
suspect it. When you took up the book it was a flood 
of light ; when others took it, it was but a book. You 
raised your eyes sometimes ; you spoke of archangels ; 
oh ! you were my archangel. What you said penetrated 
my thoughts at once. Before then I know not even 
whether I believed in God. Since I have known you I 
have learnt to pray. I used to say to Douce, Dress me 
quickly, lest I should be late at the service ; and I has- 
tened to the church. Such it was with me to love some 
one. I did not know the cause. I said to myself. How 
devout I am becoming ! It is from you that I have learnt 
that I do not go to church for God’s service. It is true ; 

15 


450 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


I went for your sake. You spoke so well, and when you 
raised your arms to heaven you seemed to hold my heart 
within your two white hands. I was foolish, but I did 
not know it. Shall I tell you your fault ? It was your 
coming to me in the garden ; it was your speaking to 
me. If you had said nothing, I should have known 
nothing. If you had gone, I should, perhaps, have been 
sad, but now I should die. Since I know that I love you, 
you cannot leave me. Of what are you thinking ? You 
do not seem to listen to me.^' 

Caudray replied, — 

“You heard what was said last night ? ® 

“ Ah me ! ” 

“ What can I do against that ? ** 

They were silent for a moment, Caudray continued, — 

“ There is but one duty left to me. It is to depart.'^ 

“ And mine to die. Oh, how I wish there was no sea, 
but only sky ! It seems to me as if that would settle all, 
and that our departure would be the same. It was wrong 
to speak to me ; why did you speak to me ? Do not 
go. What will become of me ? I tell you I shall die. 
You will be far off when I shall be in my grave. Oh, 
my heart will break ! I am very wretched ; yet my 
uncle is not unkind.” 

It was the first time in her life that Deruchette had 
ever said “ my uncle.” Until then she had always said 
“ my father.” 

Caudray stepped back and made a sign to the boat- 
man. Deruchette heard the sound of the boat-hook 
among the shingle, and the step of the man on the gun- 
wale of the boat. 

“ No ! no ! ” cried Deruchette. 

“ It must be, Deruchette,” replied Caudray. i 

“ No, never ! For the sake of an engine — impos- j 
sible. Did you see that horrible man last night ? You | 
cannot abandon me thus. You are wise ; you can find } 
a means. It is impossible that you bade me come here 
this morning with the idea of leaving me. I have never 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


451 


done anything to deserve this ; you can have no re- 
proach to make me. Is it by that vessel that you in- 
tended to sail ? I win not let you go. You shall not 
leave me. Heaven does not open thus to close so soon. 
I know you will remain. Besides^, it is not yet time. 
Oh, how I love you ! ” 

And pressing closely to him, she interlaced the fingers 
of each hand behind his neck, as if partly to make a bond 
of her two arms for detaining him, and partly with her 
joined hands to pray. He moved away this gentle re- 
straint, while Deruchette resisted as long as she could. 

Deruchette sank upon a projection of the rock covered 
with ivy, lifting by an unconscious movement the sleeve 
of her dress up to the elbow, and exhibiting her graceful 
arm. A pale suffused light was in her eyes. The boat 
was approaching. 

Caudray held her head between his hands. He 
touched her hair with a sort of religious care, fixed his 
eyes upon her for some moments, then kissed her on the 
forehead fervently, and in an accent trembling with 
anguish, and in which might have been traced the up- 
rooting of his soul, he uttered the word which has so 
often resounded in the depths of the human heart, 

Farewell ! ” 

Deruchette burst into loud sobs. 

At this moment they heard a voice near them, which 
said solemnly and deliberately, — 

** Why should you not be man and wife ? ” 

Caudray raised his head. Deruchette looked up. 

Gilliatt stood before them. 

He had approached by a bypath. 

He was no longer the same man that he had appeared 
on the previous night. He had arranged his hair, shaved 
his beard, put on shoes, and a white shirt, with a large 
collar turned over, sailor fashion. He wore a sailor^s 
costume, but all was new. A gold ring was on his httle 
finger. He seemed profoundly calm. His sunburnt skin 
had become pale : a hue of sickly bronze overspread it. 


452 


I HE TOHEKS OF TOE SEA. 


They looked at him astonished. Though so changed, 
Deruchette recognized him. But the words which he had 
spoken were so far from what was passing in their minds 
at that moment that they had left no distinct impression. 

Gilliatt spoke again. 

“ Why should you say farewell ? Be man and wife, 
and go together.” 

Deruchette started. A trembling seized her from head 
to foot. 

Gilliatt continued, — 

“ Miss Lethierry is a woman. She is of age. It de- 
pends only on herself. Her uncle is but her uncle. You 
love each other ” 

D6ruchette interrupted in a gentle voice, and asked, 
‘‘ How came you here ? ” 

“ Make yourselves one,” repeated Gilliatt. 

Deruchette began to have a sense of the meaning of 
his words. She stammered out, — 

“ My poor uncle ! ” 

“ If the marriage was yet to be,” said Gilhatt, he 
would refuse. When it is over he will consent. Besides, 
you are going to leave here. When you return he will 
forgive.” 

Gilliatt added, with a slight touch of bitterness, “ And 
then he is thinking of nothing just now but the rebuilding 
of his boat. This will occupy his mind during your 
absence. The Durande will console him.” 

“ I cannot,” said Deruchette, in a state of stupor which 
was not without its gleam of joy. “I must not leave 
him unhappy.” 

“ It will be but for a short time,” answered Gilliatt. 

Caudray and Deruchette had been, as it were, be- 
wildered. They recovered themselves now. The meaning 
of Gilliatt’s words became plainer as their surprise 
diminished. There was a slight cloud still before them, 
but their part was not to resist. We yield easily to those 
who come to save. Objections to a return into Paradise 
are weak. There was something in the attitude of D6ru- 


TIIE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


453 


chette, as she leaned imperceptibly upon her lover, which 
seemed to make common cause with Gilliatt’s words. 
The enigma of the presence of this man, and of his 
utterances, which, in the mind of D^ruchette in par- 
ticular, produced various kinds of astonishment,, was a 
thing apart. He said to them, “ Be man and wife ! ” 
This was clear ; if there was responsibility, it was his. 
D^ruchette had a confused feeling that, for many reasons, 
he had the right to decide upon her fate. Caudray 
murmured, as if plunged in thought, An uncle is not a 
father.^’ 

His resolution was corrupted by the sudden and 
happy turn in his ideas. The probable scruples of the 
clergyman melted, and dissolved in his heart’s love for 
D4ruchette. 

Gilliatt’s tone became abrupt and harsh, and like the 
pulsations of fever. 

“ There must be no delay, he said. “You have time, 
but that is all. Come.” 

Caudray observed him attentively, and suddenly ex- 
claimed, — 

“ I recognize you. It was you who saved my life.” 

Gilliatt replied, — 

“ I think not.” 

“ Yonder,” said Caudray, “ at the extremity of the 
Banques.” 

“ I do not know the place,” said Gilliatt. 

“ It was on the very day that I arrived here.” 

“ Let us lose no time,” interrupted Gilliatt. 

“ And if I am not deceived, you are the man whom 
we met last night.” 

“ Perhaps.” 

“ What is your name ? ” 

Gilliatt raised his voice, — 

“ Boatman ! wait there for us. We shall return soon. 
— You asked me, Miss Lethierry, how I came to be here. 
The answer is very simple. I walked behind you. You 
are twenty -one. In this country, when persons are of 


454 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


age, and depend only on themselves, they may be married 
immediately. Let us take the path along the water- 
side. It is passable ; the tide wiU not rise here till noon. 
But lose no time. Come with me.” 

Deruchette and Caudray seemed to consult each other 
by a glance. They were standing close together motion- 
less. They were intoxicated with joy. There are strange 
hesitations sometimes on the edge of the abyss of happi- 
ness. They imderstood, as it were, without under- 
standing. 

“ His name is Gilliatt,” whispered Deruchette. 

Gilliatt interrupted them with a sort of tone of 
authority. 

“ What do you linger for ? ” he asked. “ I tell you 
to follow me.” 

“ Whither ? ” asked Caudray. 

There!” 

And GiUiatt pointed with his finger towards the spire 
of the church. 

Gilliatt walked on before, and they followed him. His 
step was firm ; but they walked unsteadily. 

As they approached the church, an expression dawned 
upon those two pure and beautiful countenances which 
was soon to become a smile. The approach to the 
church lighted them up. In the hollow eyes of Gilliatt 
there was the darkness of night. The beholder might ' 
have imagined that he saw a spectre leading two souls 
to Paradise. 

Caudray and Deruchette scarcely took count of what < 
had happened. The interposition of this man was like | 
the branch clutched at by the drowning. They followed 
their guide with the docility of despair, leaning on the 
first comer. Those who feel themselves near death easily i. 
accept the accident which seems to save. Deruchette, > 
more ignorant of life, was more confident. Caudray was j 
thoughtful. Deruchette was of age, it was true. The 
English formalities of marriage are simple, especially in 
primitive parts, where the clergyman has almost a dis- 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


455 


cretionary power ; but would the Dean consent to cele- 
brate the marriage without even inquiring whether the 
uncle consented ? This was the question. Neverthe- 
less they could learn. In any case there would be but 
a delay. 

But what was this man ? and if it was really he 
whom Lethierry the night before had declared should 
be his son-in-law, what could be the meaning of his 
actions ? The very obstacle itself had become a provi- 
dence. Caudray yielded ; but his yielding was only 
the rapid and tacit assent of a man who feels himself 
saved from despair. 

The pathway was uneven, and sometimes wet and 
difficult to pass. Caudray, absorbed in thought, did not 
observe the occasional pools of water or the heaps of 
shingle. But from time to time Gilliatt turned and said 
to him, ** Take heed of those stones. Give her your 
hand.*' 


III. 

THE FORETHOUGHT OF SELF-SACRIFICE, 

It struck ten as they entered the church. 

By reason of the early hour, and also on account of 
the desertion of the town that day, the church was 
empty. 

At the farther end, however, near the table which in the 
reformed church fulfils the. place of the altar, there were 
three persons. They were the Dean, his evangelist, and 
the registrar. The Dean, who was the Reverend Jacque- 
min Herode, was seated ; the evangelist and the registrar 
stood beside him. 

A book was open upon the table. 

Beside him, upon a credence-table^ was another book. 
It was the parish register, and also open ; and an atten- 
tive eye might have remarked a page on which was some 


456 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


writing, of which the ink was not yet dry. By the side 
of the register were a pen and a writing-desk. 

The Reverend Jaquemin H6rode rose on perceiving 
Caudray. 

“ I have been expecting you,” he said. All is 
ready.” 

The Dean, in fact, wore his officiating robes. 

Caudray looked towards Gilliatt. 

The Reverend Doctor added^ “ I am at your service, 
brother ; ” and he bowed. 

It was a bow which neither turned to right or left. 
It was evident from the direction of the Deanes gaze 
that he did not recognize the existence of any one but 
Caudray, for Caudray was a clergyman and a gentleman. 
Neither Deruchette, who stood aside, nor GiUiatt, who 
was in the rear, was included in the salutation. His 
look was a sort of parenthesis in which none but Caudray 
were admitted. The observance of these little niceties 
constitutes an important feature in the mainteneuice of 
order and the preservation of society. 

The Dean continued, with a graceful and dignified 
urbanity, — 

** I congratulate you, my colleague, from a double 
point of view. You have lost your uncle, and are about 
to take a wife ; you are blessed with riches on the one 
hand and happiness on the other. Moreover, thanks to 
the boat which they are about to rebuild. Mess Lethierry 
will also be rich ; which is as it should be. Miss Lethierry 
was bom in this parish ; I have verified the date of her 
birth in the register. She is of age, and at her own dis- 
posal. Her uncle too; who is her only relative, con- 
sents. You are anxious to be united immediately on 
account of your approaching departure. This I can 
imderstand ; but this being the marriage of the rector 
of the parish, I should have been gratified to have 
seen it associated with a little more solemnity, I will 
consult your wishes by not detaining you longer than 
necessary. The essentials wiU be soon complied with. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


457 


The form is already drawn up in the register, and 
it requires only the names to be filled in. By the 
terms of the law and custoni, the marriage may be cele- 
brated immediately after the inscription. The declara- 
tion necessary for the licence has been duly made. I 
take upon myself a slight irregularity,- for the applica- 
tion for the licence ought to have been registered seven 
days in advance ; but I yield to necessity and the 
urgency of your departure. Be it so, then. I will pro- 
ceed with the ceremony. My evangelist will be the 
witness for the bridegroom ; as regards the witness for 
the bride ” 

The Dean turned towards Gilliatt. Gilliatt made a 
movement of his head. 

“ That is sufficient,'' said the Dean. 

Caudray remained motionless ; Deruchette was happy, 
but no less powerless to move. 

“ Nevertheless," continued the Dean, “ there is still 
an obstacle." 

Deruchette started. 

The Dean continued, — 

The representative here present of Mess Lethierry 
applied for the licence for you, and has signed the declara- 
tion on the register." And with the thumb of his left 
hand the Dean pointed to GiUiatt ; which prevented the 
necessity of his remembering his' name. “ The mes- 
senger from Mess Lethierry," he added, “ has informed 
me this morning that being too much occupied to come 
in person. Mess Lethierry desired that the marriage 
should take place immediately. This desire, expressed 
verbally, is not sufficient. In consequence of having 
to grant the licence, and of the irregularity which I take 
upon myself, I cannot proceed so rapidly without in- 
forming myself from Mess Lethierry personally, unless 
some one can produce his signature. Whatever might 
be my desire to serve you, I cannot be satisfied with a 
mere message. I must have some written document." 

'' That need not delay us," said Gilliatt. And he 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


458 

presented a paper to the Dean. The Dean took it, ^ 
Tperused it by a glance, seemed to pass over some lines as 
unimportant, and read aloud : “ Go to the Dean for the 
licence. I wish the marriage to take place as soon as 
possible. Immediately would be better.” 

He placed the paper on the table, and proceeded, — 

“It is signed Lethierry. It would have been more 
respectful to have addressed himself to me. But since 
I am called on to serve a colleague, I ask no more.” 

Caudray glanced again at Gilliatt. There are mo- 
ments when mind and mind comprehend each other. 
Caudray felt that there was some deception ; he had 
not the strength of purpose, perhaps he had not the 
idea of revealing it. Whether in obedience to a latent 
heroism, of which he had begun to obtain a glimpse, 
or whether from a deadening of the conscience, arising^ 
from the suddenness of the happiness placed within his’ 
reach, he uttered no word. 

The Dean took the pen, and,j aided by the clerk, filled 
up the spaces in the page of the register ; then he rose, 
and by a gesture invited Caudray and Deruchette to 
approach the table. j 

The ceremony commenced. It was a strange moment. 
Caudray and Deruchette stood beside each other before 
the minister. He who has ever dreamed of a marriage 
in which he himself tvas chief actor may conceive some- 
thing of the feeling which they experienced. 

Gilliatt stood at a little distance in the shadow of the ? 
pillars. I 

Deruchette, on rising in the morning, desperate, think- I 
ing only of death and its associations, had dressed her- ■ 
self in white. Her attire, which had been associated in ; 
her mind with mourning, was suited to her nuptials. 

A white dress is all that is necessary for the bride. 

A ray of happiness was visible upon her face. Never f 
had she appeared more beautiful. Her features were 
remarkable for prettiness rather than what is called i 
beauty. Their fault, if fault it be, lay in a certain t 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


459 


excess of grace. O^nichette in repose — that is, neither 
disturbed by passion or grief — was graceful above all. 
The ideal virgin is the transfiguration of a face like this. 
Deruchette, touched by her sorrow and her love, seemed 
to have caught that higher and more holy expression. 
It was the difference between the field daisy and the 
Ifiy. 

The tears had scarcely dried upon her cheeks ; one 
perhaps still lingered in the midst of her smiles. Traces 
of tears indistinctly visible form a pleasing but sombre 
accompaniment of joy. 

The Dean, standing near the table, placed his finger 
upon the open book, and asked in a distinct voice whether 
they knew of any impediment to their union. 

There was no reply. 

Amen ! ” said the Dean. 

Caudray and Deruchette advanced a step or two 
towards the table. 

** Joseph Ebenezer Caudray, wilt thou have this woman 
to be thy wedded wife ? 

Caudray replied, “ I will.’* 

The Dean continued, — 

** Durande Deruchette Lethierry, wilt thou have this 
man to be thy wedded husband ? ” 

Deruchette, in an agony of soul, springing from her 
excess of happiness, murmured rather than uttered, — 

“ I will.” 

Then followed the beautiful form of the Anglican 
marriage service. The Dean looked around, and in the 
twilight of the church uttered the solemn words, — 

“ Who giveth this woman to be married to this man ? ” 

Gilliatt answered, '' I do ! ” 

There was an interval of silence. Caudray and Deru- 
chette felt a vague sense of oppression in spite of their joy. 

The Dean placed Deruchette’s right hand in Caudray’s, 
and Caudray repeated after him, — 

‘‘ I take thee, Durande Deruchette, to be my wedded 
wife for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sick- 


460 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


ness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do 
us part ; and thereto I plight thee my troth.” 

The Dean then placed Caudray’s right hand in that of 
Deruchette, and Deruchette said after him, — 

“ I take thee to be my wedded husband for better for 
worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or in health, to 
love and to cherish till death do us part ; and thereto I 
plight thee my troth.” 

The Dean asked, “ Where is the ring ? ” The question 
took them by surprise. Caudray had no ring ; but 
Gilliatt took off the gold ring which he wore upon his 
little finger. It was probably the wedding-ring which 
had been sold that morning by the jeweller in the Com- 
mercial Arcade. 

The Dean placed the ring upon the book ; then handed 
it to Caudray, who took Deruchette’s little trembling 
left hand, passed the ring over her fourth finger, and 
said,— > 

“ With this ring I thee wed ! ” 

“ In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost,” continued the Dean. 

“ Amen,” said his evangelist. 

Then the Dean said, ” Let us pray.” 

Caudray and Deruchette turned towards the table, 
and knelt down. 

Gilliatt, standing by, inclined his head. 

So they knelt before God ; while he seemed to bend 
under the burden of his fate. 


TV. 

** FOR YOUR WIFE WHEN YOU MARRY.” 

As they left the church they could see the Cashmere 
making preparations for her departure. 

“ You are in time,” said Gilliatt. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


461 


They chose again the path leading to the Havelet. 

Caudray and D^ruchette went before, GiUiatt this time 
walking behind them. They were two somnambulists. 
Their bewilderment had not passed away, but only 
changed in form. They took no heed of whither they 
were going, or of what they did. They hurried on mechan- 
ically, scarcely remembering the existence of anything, 
feeling that they were united for ever, but scarcely able 
to connect two ideas in their minds. In ecstasy like theirs 
it is as impossible to think as it is to swim in a torrent. 
In the midst of their trouble and darkness they had 
been plunged in a whirlpool of delight ; they bore a 
paradise within themselves. They did not speak, but 
conversed with each other by the mysterious sympathy 
of their souls. Deruchette pressed Caudray's arm to 
her side. 

The footsteps of Gilhatt behind them reminded them 
now and then that he was there. They were deeply 
moved, but could find no words. The excess of emotion 
results in stupor. Theirs was delightful, but over- 
whelming. They were man and wife : every other idea 
was postponed to that. What Gilliatt had done was 
well ; that was all that they could grasp. They experi- 
enced towards their guide a deep but vague gratitude 
in their hearts. Deruchette felt that there was some 
mystery to be explained, but not now. Meanwhile 
they accepted their unexpected happiness. They felt 
themselves controlled by the abruptness and decision of 
this man who conferred on them so much happiness 
with a kind of authority. To question him, to talk with 
him, seemed impossible. Too many impressions rushed 
into their minds at once for that. Their absorption was 
complete. 

Events succeed each other sometimes with the rapidity 
of hailstones. Their effect is overpowering ; they deaden 
the senses. Falling upon existences habitually calm, 
they render incidents rapidly unintelligible even to those 
whom they chiefly concern ; we become scarcely con- 


4^2 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


scious of our own adventures ; we are overwhelmed 
without guessing the cause, or crowned with happiness 
without comprehending it. For some hours Deruchette 
had been subjected to every kind of emotion : at first, 
surprise and delight at meeting Caudray in the garden ; 
then horror at the monster whom her uncle had presented | 
as her husband ; then her anguish when the angel of ; 
her dreams spread his wings and seemed about to depart ; 
and now her joy, a joy such as she had never known 
before, founded on an inexplicable enigma — the mon- ! 
ster of last night himself restoring her lover ; marriage 
arising out of her torture ; this Gilliatt, the evil destiny of 
last night, become to-day her saviour ! She could ex- 
plain nothing to her own mind. It was evident that all 
the morning Gilliatt had had no other occupation than 
that of preparing the way for their marriage : he had 
done all — ^he had answered for Mess Lethierry, seen the 
Dean, obtained the licence, signed the necessary declara- 
tion ; and thus the marriage had been rendered possible. 
But Deruchette understood it not. If she had, she could | 
not have comprehended the reasons. They did nothing 
but close their eyes to the world, and — ^grateful in their 
hearts — ^yield themselves up to the guidance of this good i 
demon. There was no time for explanations, and ex- ^ 
pressions of gratitude seemed too insignificant. They | 
were silent in their trance of love. ? 

The little power of thought which they retained was | 
scarcely more than sufficient to guide them on their 0 
way — to enable them to distinguish the sea from the 
land, and the Cashmere from every other vessel. 3 

In a few minutes they were at the little creek. : ! 

Caudray entered the boat first. At the moment when >! 
Deruchette was about to follow she felt her sleeve held ^ ’ 
gently. It was Gilliatt, who had placed his finger upon { 
a fold of her dress. 

Madam,” he said, you are going on a journey un- 
expectedly. It has struck me that you would have 
need of dresses and clothes. You will find a trunk ^ 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


463 


aboard the C ashmere, containing a lady’s clothing. It came 
to me from my mother. It was intended for my wife if I 
should marry. Permit me to ask your acceptance of it.” 

Deruchette, partially aroused from her dream, turned 
towards him. GiUiatt continued, in a voice which was 
scarcely audible, — 

“ I do not wish to detain you, madam, but I feel that 
I ought to give you some explanation. On the day of 
your misfortune you were sitting in the lower room ; 
you uttered certain words ; it is easy to understand that 
you have forgotten them. We are not compelled to 
remember every word we speak. Mess Lethierry was 
in great sorrow. It was certainly a noble vessel, and 
one that did good service. The misfortune was recent ; 
there was a great commotion. Those are things which 
one naturally forgets. It was only a vessel wrecked 
among the rocks ; one cannot be always thinking of an 
accident. But what I wished to tell you was, that as it 
was said that no one would go, I went. They said it 
was impossible ; but it was not. I thank you for 
listening to me a moment. You can understand, madam, 
that if I went there, it was not with the thougl^t of 
displeasing you. This is a thing, besides, of old date. 
I know that you are in haste. If there was time, if we 
could talk about this, you might perhaps remeniber. 
But this is all useless now. The history of it goes back 
to a day when there was snow upon the ground. And 
then on one occasion that I passed you I thought that 
you looked kindly on me. This is how it was. With 
regard to last night, I had not had time to go to mV 
home. I came from my labour; I was all tom a^ 
ragged; I startled you, and you fainted. I was io 
blame ; people do not come like that to strands’ 
houses ; I ask your forgiveness. This is nearly dl I 
had to say. You are about to sail. You will hav fine 
weather ; the wind is in the east. Farewell. Yfu will 
not blame me for troubhng you with these things This 
is the last minute.” 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


464 

‘‘ I am thinking of the trunk you spoke oi” replied 
Deruchette. “ Why do you not keep it for your wife, 
when you marry ? ” 

“It is most likely, madam,” replied Gilliatt, “ that I 
shall never marry.” 

“ That would be a pity,” said Deruchette ; “ you are 
so good.” 

And Deruchette smiled. Gilliatt returned her smile. 

Then he assisted her to step into the boat. 

In less than a quarter of an hour afterwards Caudray 
and Deruchette were aboard the Cashmere in the roads. 


V. 

THE GREAT TOMB. 

Gilliatt walked along the water-side, passed rapidly 
through St. Peter’s Port, and then turned towards St. 
Sampson by the seashore. In his anxiety to meet no 
one '^hom he knew, he avoided the highways now filled 
with foot-passengers by his great achievement. 

For a long time, as the reader knows, he had had a 
peculiar manner of traversing the country in all parts 
without being observed. He knew the bypaths, and 
favoiired solitary and winding routes ; he had the shy 
habits of a wild beast who knows that he is disliked, 
and keeps at a distance. When quite a child, he had 
been quick to feel how little welcome men showed in 
t^eir faces at his approach, and he had gradually con- 
tracted that habit of being alone which had since become 
an pstinct. 

passed through the Esplanade, then by the Salerie. 
Now "then he turned and looked behind him at the' 
Cashrh^'^^ in the roads, which was beginning to set her 
sails. Tkere was little wind ; Gilliatt went faster than 
the Casfi^^'^^' He walked with downcast eyes among 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 465 

the\ lower rocks at the water’s edge. The tide was be- 
ginning to rise. 

Suddenly he stopped, and, turning his back, contem- 
plated for some minutes a group of oaks beyond the 
rocks which concealed the road to Vale. They were the 
oaks at the spot called the Basses Maisons. It was there 
that Deruchette once wrote with her finger the name 
of Gilliatt in the snow. Many a day had passed since 
that snow had melted away. 

Then he pursued his way. 

The day was beautiful — more beautiful than any that 
had yet been seen that year. It was one of those spring 
days when May suddenly pours forth all its beauty, 
and when nature seems to have no thought but to rejoice 
and be happy. Amidst the many murmurs from forest 
and village, from the sea and the air, a sound of cooing 
could be distinguished. The first butterflies of the year 
were resting on the early roses. Everything in nature 
seemed new — the grass, the mosses, the leaves, the per- 
fumes, the rays of light. The sun shone as if it had never 
shone before. The pebbles seemed bathed in coolness. 
Birds but lately fledged sang out their deep notes from 
the trees, or fluttered among the boughs in their attempts 
to use their new-found wings. There was a chattering 
all together of goldfinches, pewits, tomtits, woodpeckers, 
bullfinches, and thrushes. The blossoms of lilacs. May 
lilies, daphnes, and melilots mingled their various hues 
in the thickets. A beautiful kind of water-weed peculiar 
to Guernsey covered the pools with an emerald green, 
where the kingfishers and the water-wagtails, which 
make such graceful little nests, came down to bathe their 
wings. Through every opening in the branches appeared 
the deep blue sky. A few lazy clouds followed each other 
in the azure depths. The ear seemed to catch the sound 
of kisses sent from invisible lips. Every old wall had 
its tufts of wallflowers. The plum-trees and laburnums 
were in blossom ; their white and yellow masses gleamed 
through the interlacing boughs. The spring showered 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


466 

all her gold and silver on the woods. The new shoots 
and leaves were green and fresh. Calls of welcome were 
in the air ; the approaching summer opened her hospi- 
table doors for birds coming from afar. It was the 
time of the arrival of the swallows. The clusters of 
furze bushes bordered the steep sides of hollow roads in 
anticipation of the clusters of the hawthorn. The pretty 
and the beautiful reigned side by side ; the magnificent 
and the graceful, the great and the little, had each their 
place. No note in the great concert of nature was lost. 
Green microscopic beauties took their place in the vast 
universal plan in which all seemed distinguishable as in 
limpid water. Everywhere a divine fullness, a mysteri- 
ous sense of expansion, suggested the imseen effort of 
the sap in movement. Glittering things glittered more 
than ever ; loving natures became more tender. There 
was a h5min in the flowers, and a radiance in the sounds 
of the air. The wdde-diffused harmony of nature burst 
forth on every side. All things which felt the dawn of 
life invited others to put forth shoots. A movement 
coming from below, and also from above, stirred vaguely 
all hearts susceptible to the scattered and subterranean 
influence of germination. The flower shadowed forth 
the fruit ; young maidens dreamed of love. It was 
nature’s universal bridal. It was fine, bright, and warm ; 
through the hedges in the meadows children were seen 
laughing and playing at their games. The fruit-trees 
filled the orchards wdth their heaps of white and pink 
blossom. In the fields were primroses, cowslips, milfoil, 
daffodils, daisies, speedwell, jacinths, and violets. Blue 
borage and yellow irises swarmed with those beautiful 
little pink stars which flower always in groups, and are 
hence called “ companions.’^ Creatures with golden 
scales glided between the stones. The flowering house- 
leek covered the thatched roofs with purple patches. 
Women were plaiting hives in the open air ; and the 
bees were abroad, mingling their humming with the 
murmurs from the sea. 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


467 

When Gilliatt arrived at St. Sampson the water had 
not yet risen at the farther end of the harbour, and he 
was able to cross it dry-footed, unperceived behind the 
hulls of vessels fixed for repair. A number of flat 
stones were placed there at regular distances to make 
a causeway. 

He was not observed. The crowd was at the other 
end of the port, near the narrow entrance, by the Brav^es. 
There his name was in every mouth. They were, in 
fact, speaking about him so much that none paid atten- 
tion to him. He passed, sheltered in some degree by 
the very commotion that he had caused. 

He saw from afar the sloop in the place where he 
had moored it, with the funnel standing between its four 
chains ; observed a movement of carpenters at their 
work, and confused outlines of figures passing to and 
fro ; and he could distinguish the loud and cheery voice 
of Mess Lethierry giving orders. 

He threaded the narrow alleys behind the Brav^es. 
There was no one there beside him. All curiosity was 
concentrated on the front of the house. He chose the 
footpath alongside the low wall of the garden, but 
stopped at the angle where the wild mallow grew. He 
saw once more the stone where he used to pass his time ; 
saw once more the wooden garden seat where Deruchette 
was accustomed to sit, and glanced again at the pathway 
of the alley where he had seen the embrace of two shadows 
which had vanished. 

He soon went on his way, climbed the hill of Vale 
Castle, descended again, and directed his steps towards 
the de la Rue. 

The Houmet-Paradis was a solitude. 

His house was in the same state in which he had left 
it in the morning after dressing himself to go to St. 
Peter’s Port. 

A window was open, through which his bagpipe might 
have been seen hanging to a nail upon the wall. 

Upon the table was the little Bible given to him in 


468 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


token of gratitude by the stranger whom he now knew 
as Caudray. 

The key was in the door. He approached, placed his 
hand upon it, turned it twice in the lock, put the key 
in his pocket, and departed. 

He walked not in the direction of the town, but towards 
the sea. 

He traversed his garden diagonally, taking the shortest 
way, without regard to the beds, but taking care not to 
tread upon the plants which he placed there, because 
he had heard that they were favourites with D4ruchette. 

He crossed the parapet wall, and let himself down upon 
the rocks. 

Going straight on, he began to follow the long ridge 
of rocks which connected the Bfi de la Rue with the 
great natural obelisk of granite rising erect from the sea, 
which was known as the Beast’s Horn. This was the 
place of the Gild-Holm-’Ur seat. 

He strode on from block to block like a giant among 
mountains. To make long strides upon a row of breakers 
is like walking upon the ridge of a roof. 

A fisherwoman with dredge-nets, who had been walk- 
ing naked-footed among the pools of sea-water at some 
distance, and had just regained the shore, called to him, 
“ Take care ; the tide is coming.” But he held on his 
way. 

Having arrived at the great rock of the point, the Horn, 
which rises like a pinnacle from the sea, he stopped. It 
was the extremity of the promontory. 

He looked around. 

Out at sea a few sailing-boats at anchor were fishing. 
Now and then rivulets of silver glittered among them 
in the sun : it was the water running from the nets. 
The Cashmere was not yet off St. Sampson. She had 
set her maintopsail, and was between Herm and 
Jethou. 

Gilliatt rounded the rock, and came under the Gild- 
Holm-’Ur seat, at the foot of that kind of abrupt stairs 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 469 

where, less than three months before, he had assisted 
Caudray to come down. He ascended. 

The greater number of the steps were already under 
water. Two or three only were still dry, by which he 
climbed. 

The steps led up to the Gild-Holm-’Ur seat. He 
reached the niche, contemplated it for a moment, pressed 
his hand upon his eyes, and let it glide gently from one 
eyelid to the other — a gesture by which he seemed to 
obliterate the memory of the past — then sat down in 
the hoUow, with the perpendicular wall behind him, and 
the ocean at his feet. 

The Cashmere at that moment was passing the great 
round half-submerged tower, defended by one sergeant 
and a cannon, which marks the half-way in the roads 
between Herm and St. Peter’s Port. 

A few flowers stirred among the crevices in the rock 
about Gilliatt’s head. The sea was blue as far as eye 
could reach. The wind came from the east ; there was 
a little surf in the direction of the island of Sark, of 
which only the western side is visible from Guernsey. 
In the distance appeared the coast of France like a mist, 
with the long yellow strips of sand about Carteret. Now 
and then a white butterfly fluttered by. The butter- 
flies frequently fly out to sea. 

The breeze was very slight. The blue expanse, both 
above and below, was tranquil. Not a ripple agitated 
those species of serpents, of an azure more or less dark, 
which indicate on the surface of the sea the lines of sunken 
rocks. 

The Cashmere, little moved by the wind, had set her 
topsail and studdingsails to catch the breeze. All her 
canvas was spread, but the wind being a side one, her 
studdingsails only compelled her to hug the Guernsey 
coast more closely. She had passed the beacon of St. 
Sampson, and was off the hill of Vale Castle. The 
moment was approaching when she would double the 
point of the Bfl de la Rue. 


470 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


Gilliatt watched her approach. 

The air and sea were still. The tide rose, not by 
waves, but by an imperceptible swell. The level of the 
water crept upward without a palpitation. The subdued 
murmur from the open sea was soft as the breathing of a 
child. 

In the direction of the harbour of St. Sampson faint 
echoes could be heard of carpenters’ hammers. The 
carpenters were probably the workmen constructing the 
tackle, gear, and apparatus for removing the engine from 
the sloop. The sounds, however, scarcely reached GiUiatt 
by reason of the mass of granite at his back. 

The Cashmere approached with the slowness of a 
phantom. 

Gilliatt watched it still. 

Suddenly a touch and a sensation of cold caused him 
to look down. The sea had reached his feet. 

He lowered his eyes, then raised them again. 

The Cashmere was quite near. 

The rock in which the rains had hollowed out the 
Gild-Holm-’Ur seat was so completely vertical, and there 
was so much water at its base, that in calm weather 
vessels were able to pass without danger within a few 
cables’ lengths. 

The Cashmere was abreast of the rock. It rose 
straight upwards as if it had grown out of the water, 
or like the lengthening out of a shadow. The rigging 
showed black against the heavens and in the magnificent 
expanse of the sea. The long sails, passing foi; a moment 
over the sun, became lighted up with a sin^lar glory 
and transparence. The water murmured indistinctly; but 
no other noise marked the majestic gliding of that outline. 
The deck was as visible as if he had stood upon it. 

The steersman was at the helm ; a cabin-boy was 
climbing the shrouds ; a few passengers, leaning on the 
bulwarks, were contemplating the beauty of the scene. 
The captain was smoking ; but nothing of all this was 
seen by Gilliatt. 


IHE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


471 


There was a spot on the deck on which the broad 
sunlight fell. It was on this comer that his eyes were 
fixed. In this sunlight were Demchette and Caudray. 
They were sitting together side by side, like two birds, 
wanning themselves in the noonday sun, upon one of 
those covered seats with a little awning which well- 
ordered packet-boats provided for passengers, and upon 
which was the inscription, when it happened to be an 
English vessel, “ For ladies only.” D6mchette’s head 
was leaning upon Caudray ’s shoulder ; his arm was 
around her waist ; they held each other’s hands with 
their fingers interwoven. A celestial light was discernible 
in those two faces formed by innocence. Their chaste 
embrace was expressive of their earthly union and their 
purity of soul. The seat was a sort of alcove, almost a 
nest ; it was at the same time a glory round them — the 
tender aureola of love passing into a cloud. 

The silence was like the calm of heaven. 

Caudray ’s gaze was fixed in contemplation. Deru- 
chette’s lips moved ; and, amidst that perfect silence, 
as the wind carried the vessel near shore, and it glided 
within a few fathoms of the Gild-Holm-’Ur seat, Gilliatt 
heard the tender and musical voice of Demchette ex- 
claiming, — 

“ Look yonder. It seems as if there were a man upon 
the rock.” 

The vessel passed. 

Leaving the promontory of the Bll de la Rue behind, 
the Cashmere glided on upon the waters. In less than 
a quarter of an hour her masts and sails formed only a 
white obelisk, gradually decreasing against the horizon. 
Gilliatt felt that the water had reached his knees. 

He contemplated the vessel speeding on her way. 

The breeze freshened out at sea. He could see the 
Cashmere mn out her lower studding-sails and her stay- 
sails, to take advantage of the rising wind. She was 
already clear of the waters of Guernsey. Gilliatt followed 
the vessel with his eyes. 


472 


THE TOILERS OF THE SEA. 


The waves had reached his waist. 

The tide was rising : time was passing av’ay. 

The sea-mews and cormorants flew about him rest- 
lessly, as if anxious to warn him of his danger. It seemed 
as if some of his old companions of the Douvres rocks 
fl5dng there had recognized him. 

An hour had passed. 1 

The wind from the sea was scarcely felt in the roads ; 
but the form of the Cashmere was rapidly growing less. i 
The sloop, according to all appearance, was sailing fast, f 
It was already nearly off the Casquets. | 

There was no foam around the Gild-Holm-’Ur ; no | 
wave beat against its granite sides. The water rose ^ 
peacefully. It was nearly level with GilliatLs shoulders. 
Another hour had passed. ^ 

The Cashmere was beyond the waters of Aurigny. v- 
The Ortach rock concealed it for a moment ; it | 
passed behind it, and came forth again as from 
an eclipse. The sloop was veeriiig to the north upon ^ 
the open sea. It was now only a point glittering in J 
the sun. 

The birds were hovering about Gilliatt, uttering short ,j 
cries. Only his head was now visible. The tide was | 
nearly at the full. Evening was approaching. Behind ^ 
him, in the roads, a few fishing-boats were making for 
the harbour. 

Gilliatt’s eyes continued fixed upon the vessel in the 
horizon. Their expression resembled nothing earthly, -j 
A strange lustre shone in their calm and tragic depths, i 
There was in them the peace of vanished hopes, the calm jf 
but sorrowful acceptance of an end far different from vj, 
his dreams. By degrees the dusk of heaven began to 
darken in them, though gazing still upon the point in 
space. At the same moment the wide waters round the ^ 
Gild-Holm-’Ur and the vast gathering twilight closed i 
upon them. ' ^ 

The Cashmere, now scarcely perceptible, had become 
? mere spot in the thin haze. 


THE TOILERS OF THE gEA. 473 

Gradually the spot, which was but a shape, grew 
paler. 

Then it dwindled, and finally disappeared. 

At the moment when the vessel vanished on the line 
of the horizon the head of Gilliatt disappeared. Nothing 
was visible now but the sea. 









4 





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